Category: Ukraine

BRUSSELS–The European Union will host the next round of gas talks between Ukraine and Russia on April 14 in Berlin, the European Commission said on Tuesday. Ukraine and Russia said last month that they would seek to negotiate a deal that would ensure natural-gas deliveries to Ukraine and the European Union until a dispute over unpaid bills has been settled. The first round of those talks took place in Brussels on March 20. The talks would be about the price of Russia’s gas exports, the amount Ukraine needs to import for gas storage as well as financial support to Ukraine, said a spokeswoman for the commission, the EU’s executive arm. Last week, Russia and Ukraine extended an interim gas deal through the end of the second quarter, the largest Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz said, giving the sides time to negotiate a longer-term deal.

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Photo A man collected debris on the roof of a burned house after shelling in Donetsk, Ukraine, on Monday. Credit Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images MOSCOW — President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine on Monday denounced calls for “federalization” of the country, which Russia has endorsed as a way of granting political autonomy to the areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Establishing greater local autonomy and governmental authority is widely viewed as crucial to settling the nearly yearlong war in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and it was a central plank in a cease-fire accord signed in February. But there are fierce disagreements over how to shape those powers, and how far they would extend. Speaking at the first meeting of a commission charged with developing amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution, Mr. Poroshenko described federalization as tantamount to breaking apart the country, and said […]

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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Ukraine has asked for 1 billion cubic meters of gas imports from Russia in April, trebling the amount it received in March, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Saturday. On Thursday, Ukraine’s state gas concern Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom signed an interim deal for cheaper supplies of gas from Russia for the next three months, providing a breathing space for both sides in their protracted wrangle over pricing. "Naftogaz has contracted 1 billion cubic meters of gas for April," Novak said in an interview with the state-run Rossiya television station. This suggests that Kiev will be getting about 33 million cubic meters of gas per day, while in March the figure stood at around 10 million per day, Novak said in the interview for the news show ‘Vesti on Saturday’ with Sergei Brilyov. Under the agreement signed on Thursday, Kiev is to pay $248 per […]

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KIEV (Reuters) – 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 […]

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ENLARGE A natural gas line runs through the countryside near Donetsk, Ukraine. Kiev started to diversify away from its eastern neighbor as tensions between the countries escalated last spring. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images KIEV, Ukraine—Ukraine will temporarily stop buying natural gas from Russia on April 1 as the current interim deal expires , the country’s energy minister said on Monday, citing high prices. Kiev, which is heavily reliant on Russian gas, started to diversify away from its eastern neighbor as tensions between the countries escalated last spring, seeking independence from Russian gas shipments in three to four years. Currently “there’s no reason to buy [Russian gas] at a higher price than we can buy from Europe, so I think we’ll just stop buying it,” Ukraine’s Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn told a briefing in Kiev. In October, Ukraine and Russia struck a temporary deal to ensure uninterrupted transit of Russian […]

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A Ukrainian soldier walks near a position of the Ukrainian forces near the village of Pervomayske. Photographer: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images (Bloomberg) — Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine are preparing for a new offensive to expand their territory, signaling a six-week-old truce is in danger of crumbling. “We’ll try to push them from here to hell because we’re tired of them killing civilians with indiscriminate fire,” Alexander Khodakovsky, who commands the 3,500-man Vostok Brigade, said in an interview at his headquarters in Donetsk. The campaign may start in the “foreseeable future,” according to Khodakovsky, who also heads the security council of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. A rebel offensive would shatter the cease-fire negotiated last month in Minsk, Belarus, and raise the risk of escalating U.S. and European Union sanctions against Russia, which they blame for stoking the conflict. Ukraine and Germany, which brokered the accord with France, […]

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With bailout in hand, the International Monetary Fund nonetheless says Ukrainian economic woes stem from "deep-rooted" issues. UPI/Ivan Vakolenko Energy sector reforms and the addressing of "deep-rooted" structural issues in Ukraine will return the country’s economy to growth, the IMF said. The International Monetary Fund announced it approved the immediate disbursement of about $5 billion to Ukraine, with a little more than half of that allocated to budget support for the former Soviet republic. The Ukrainian administration that took over in the wake of political upheaval in late 2013 said the economy was left in shambles by former President Viktor Yanukovych . More than a year later, the IMF said real gross domestic product is expected to contract by 5.5 percent. Gripped by conflict and interference by its former Soviet patrons, the IMF nonetheless said some of the onus lies with Kiev . "Addressing deep-rooted structural problems is critical […]

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WASHINGTON — As American intelligence agencies have detected new Russian tanks and artillery crossing the border into Ukraine in recent days, President Obama is coming under increasing pressure from both parties and more officials inside his own government to send arms to the country. But he remains unconvinced that they would help. Democrats joined Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday in unanimously pressing the administration to send weapons to Kiev. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly urged Mr. Obama to consider such a move last week, joining Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. But the president has signaled privately that despite all the pressure, he remains reluctant to send arms. In part, he has told aides and visitors that arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat […]

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