Russia failed to receive about $10 billion, because of gas discount offered by Gasprom to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a press conference in the Italian Triest city.
Russian President added that despite Ukraine has saved almost $10 billion on this deal, it still owes Russia about $28 billion in form of credits to the Russian banks and debts for gas payment.
Putin made it clear that solving of the debt issue is not connected with Ukraine’s association with EU.
Asked if Russia offered Ukraine to revise the gas delivery contract in exchange for refusal of association with EY, Putin said that Gasprom’s contract with Ukraine will expire in 2015 and nobody is going to revise it. He reminded that the contract envisaged a discount of $100 per 1,000 cub.m.
“Since signing of the contract, Russia failed to receive over $10 billion, because of this discount,” he added.
Ukraine’s Neftegas company has repeatedly asked to introduce pre-payment for Russian gas transit to Europe and Gasprom has paid for the transit in advance up to January 2015. Neftegas owes $2.36 billion and the talks on solving the debt are in progress. Ukraine owes over $20 billion and about 280 billion rubles to the Russian state banks.
Russian President also said that Russia will continue working with Ukraine irrespective of the integration it is going to choose. He noted that Russia’s integration with the Ukrainian enterprises is at a high level and Russia is not interested in breaking it off.—0—
Economics
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