Category: Ukraine

Russia will postpone switching to a system of prepayment for natural gas supplies to Ukraine after receiving a partial repayment from Kiev, Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller said Monday. The decision comes after talks on Friday between the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers who indicated that a compromise could be reached in the near term. Earlier this year Russia had said it would demand prepayment from Ukraine for future gas supplies starting from June unless Kiev begins to pay off a portion of its debt. Mr. Miller said Monday that the company received $786 million, the amount Ukraine owed for gas supplies in February and March this year and the company will now postpone the deadline for switching to the prepayment scheme for one week until June 9. Ukraine has to redeem its […]

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| License Photo The drafting of a lawsuit against Russian energy company Gazprom is in the final stages, Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petronko said. Ukraine has a Friday deadline to settle a debt the Russian energy company says is for $2 billion. No payment means no gas deliveries to Ukraine starting in June, Gazprom officials said. The deadline coincides with a second round of trilateral energy talks between Ukrainian, Russian and European officials. Under a proposal , Ukraine would settle its debt and offer another $500 million by June 7. Ahead of the Friday talks in Berlin, Petronko said Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz sent a pre-arbitration statement to Gazprom in a challenge to its contractual relationship. "The drafting of the lawsuit is in the final stage," he said in an interview broadcast Thursday with RBC-Ukraine. Gazprom said Ukraine may have to pay in advance for natural gas if a […]

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Pro-Russian rebels downed a military helicopter in eastern Ukraine, killing a general and 13 troops, as a spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama blamed “outside” assistance in providing weapons. Insurgents used a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down an Mi-8 transport chopper amid heavy fighting in Slovyansk, 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Russian border, Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov told Ukraine’s parliament yesterday. “We are concerned that this indicates separatists continue to have access to advanced weaponry and other assistance from the outside,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington . Ukrainian forces used aviation and artillery assets to “destroy” the rebel unit that downed the helicopter, the Interior Ministry ’s National Guard unit said in a statement. The surge in fighting produced a new round of finger-pointing between the U.S. and Russia. Russia demanded that Ukraine halt its “fratricidal war” and withdraw troops from the mainly Russian-speaking region […]

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An agreement on gas debt between Ukraine and Russian energy company Gazprom may be finalized by the end of the week, a negotiator said Thursday. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak met this week with European Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger and Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Prodan to discuss ongoing debt issues. A proposal brokered during this week’s meetings calls on Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz to pay $2 billion by Friday and another $500 million by June 7 to settle its outstanding debts. A source close to the negotiations told Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti a deal is expected before the week’s end. "There will be no official information [about Ukraine’s decision] today," the source said on condition of anonymity. "Possibly, [the announcement will be made] after a meeting on Friday." The state news agency says Naftogaz owes about $4 billion to Gazprom, a figure disputed by […]

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Several of the largest oil companies in the world are doubling down in Russia despite moves by the West to isolate Russia and its economy. ExxonMobil and BP separately signed agreements with Rosneft – Russia’s state-owned oil company – to extend and deepen their relationships for energy exploration. The U.S. slapped sanctions on Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin in late April, freezing his assets and preventing him from obtaining visas. However, the sanctions do not extend to Rosneft itself, allowing western companies to continue to do business with the Russian oil giant. ExxonMobil signed an agreement with Rosneft, extending its partnership to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Russia’s pacific coast. Known as the Far East LNG project, the export terminal will receive natural gas from Russia’s eastern fields as well as from Sakhalin-1, an island off Russia’s east coast. Rosneft announced the deal in a press release […]

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Black smoke billows from Donetsk international airport during a heavy gun battle… Read More Russia called for unspecified “emergency” measures to halt the violence in eastern Ukraine after separatist militias suffered the heaviest casualties of their insurgency. “It’s necessary to take emergency steps to stop the bloodshed and start an inclusive internal Ukrainian dialogue,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier by phone yesterday, according to the ministry’s website. “There’s no excuse” for military action in the southeastern part of the country, Lavrov said. Ukraine stepped up air patrols over Donetsk yesterday as a convoy of pro-Russian rebels moved through the eastern city with an anti-aircraft gun in tow, threatening renewed violence after dozens of militants were killed in a government operation to retake the area’s biggest airport. Both sides suffered casualties as rebels stormed a National Guard base in Luhansk, the […]

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For weeks, rumors have flown about the foreign fighters involved in the deepening conflict in Ukraine’s troubled east, each one stranger than the last: mercenaries from an American company, Blackwater; Russian special forces; and even Chechen soldiers of fortune. Yet there they were on Tuesday afternoon, resting outside a hospital here: Chechen men with automatic rifles, some bearing bloodstained bandages, protecting their wounded comrades in a city hospital after a firefight with the Ukrainian Army. “We received an invitation to help our brothers,” said one of the fighters in heavily accented Russian. He said he was from Grozny and had fought in the Chechen War that began in 1999. He said he arrived here last week with several dozen men to join a pro-Russian militia group. The scene at the hospital was new evidence that fighters from Russia are an increasingly visible part of the conflict […]

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Ukraine’s government said it will press on with military operations against pro-Russian rebel fighters after its forces retook Donetsk airport and inflicted “significant” losses on the separatists. Troops killed “dozens” of rebels in Donetsk without suffering any losses, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said yesterday, while the mayor’s office in the eastern city said 40 people died and 31 were wounded. President-elect Petro Poroshenko has vowed to wipe out the rebels and re-establish order across Ukraine after winning office May 25. He must stabilize a shrinking economy and confront separatists who’ve captured swaths of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. They’ve declared themselves independent and are fighting to join Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March. “The elections showed that the voters are tired of ongoing violence, giving the new president a mandate to act in a forceful way to put an end to this,” Arkady Moshes , head of […]

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Ukraine’s government said it will press on with military operations against pro-Russian rebel fighters after its forces retook Donetsk airport and inflicted “significant” losses on the separatists. Troops killed “dozens” of rebels in Donetsk without suffering any losses, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said yesterday, while the mayor’s office in the eastern city said 40 people died and 31 were wounded. President-elect Petro Poroshenko has vowed to wipe out the rebels and re-establish order across Ukraine after winning office May 25. He must stabilize a shrinking economy and confront separatists who’ve captured swaths of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. They’ve declared themselves independent and are fighting to join Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March. “The elections showed that the voters are tired of ongoing violence, giving the new president a mandate to act in a forceful way to put an end to this,” Arkady Moshes , head of […]

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