Kiev said it did not need any more Russian gas for now and would guarantee the transit of piped Russian gas bound for Europe.
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Russia and Ukraine sank further into a widening trade war on Wednesday as Russia halted all gas deliveries to Ukraine and Ukraine banned Russian airlines from its airspace.
Kiev on Oct 25 barred most Russian airlines from flying into Ukraine – a decision that prompted immediate reciprocal measures by Moscow. Ukraine has since been trying to cut its dependence on Russian Federation gas, buying from European nations which had bought it from Russian Federation at a lower price.
Chairman Alexei Miller said Ukraine’s Naftogaz had failed to make the payment and delivery was halted as a result, local media is reporting.
But Yatsenyuk said in the meeting that it was the Ukrainian government that had chose to stop buying Russian gas because the price offers from other European countries were “significantly better” than those from Russia.
Russia should pay Ukraine about $350 billion – a rough estimate of the amount of damage caused by Russian aggression in Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, Miguel Canete said on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent in Brussels reports. There is no Naftogaz Ukraine request for gas supplies.
Russia’s energy minister Alexander Novak said Kiev’s failure to restore power to Crimea, which Moscow annexed a year ago, raised the possibility that coal supplies to Ukraine may be stopped, potentially starving its power stations of fuel.
The tensions over Crimea come despite a dip in fighting in the conflict in the east of Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels have agreed a shaky ceasefire deal with government troops.
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Crimean Tartar and Ukrainian activists have been blocking the supply of goods to the peninsula for more than two months. The energy row spilled over into regional politics, putting former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the cross-hairs for her role in breaking the 2009 impasse over bilateral contracts.
