ANKARA
Kiev and Moscow have signed an agreement allowing Ukraine to import gas at a much-reduced rate in an apparent step back from recent tensions over their arrangements amid the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine signed the three-month agreement on Thursday, under which it will import natural gas from Russia at $248 per thousand cubic meters - far less than the current $329 pcm.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn said in a statement posted on his ministry's website: "The agreement represents a victory for an economic approach to relations between Naftogaz and Gazprom over a political one."
The deal will also come as a relief to EU states, which would have been vulnerable to any cut in Russian supplies amid the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The minister said the new agreement would extend all the conditions of the so-called “winter package” which Russia, the EU and Ukraine had agreed on Oct. 30 in Brussels.
'Volatile price'
According to Russian news outlet RT, President Vladimir Putin had said of the deal when it was mooted: "Let's do it. Today’s terms will remain in effect for another three months.
"But, taking into account that the final gas price for our international consumers, one way or another, depends on the oil price, and the oil price on the global markets is highly volatile, in three months we’ll have to check what’s going on in the sector and after that make a supplementary decision."
Ukraine's Naftogaz will pre-pay and order sufficient quantities of gas to meet all its domestic consumption demands and guarantee undisrupted supplies to the EU under the deal.
Gazprom also commits to supply a set quantity of natural gas each day at agreed delivery points.
'Declaration of economic war'
Gazprom increased Ukraine's gas prices from $286 per 1,000-cubic meters to $485 in April last year, terminating its previous more favorable agreement with the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine amid the conflict in the eastern part of Ukraine with pro-Russian separatists.
Calling Russia's decision a "declaration of economic war", Ukraine had sought to negotiate a new price given that European countries paid between $300 and $350 and refused to pay its debt or adhere to the price hike.
Russia provides one third of Europe’s natural gas, half of which is exported through Ukraine.
After long negotiations, Moscow, Kiev and the EU signed a deal late in October to secure the flow of Russian natural gas to Ukraine this winter, with a deadline set for March.
