Ukraine has signed a new agreement to buy Russian gas over the next three months at $248 per thousand cubic meters, after paying $329 in the first quarter of this year under the just expired ‘winter package’, the Ukrainian energy ministry said on Thursday. Despite being at loggerheads over a separatist rebellion in east Ukraine, the two sides are bound by a 10-year gas agreement signed in 2009 which successive Kiev governments say carries an onerous price that weighs heavily on the economy. Apart from the price, the latest agreement extended all the other terms of the ‘winter package’ which has just lapsed between Ukraine’s state gas concern Naftogaz and Russia’s gas giant Gazprom ( GAZP.MM ), the ministry said in a statement. The agreement represented a “victory” for an economic approach to relations between Naftogaz and Gazprom over a political one, Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn […]