Putin says written deal condition for gas supplies

[January 10, 2009]  NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (AP) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin insisted Saturday that a written agreement on deployment of EU monitors to Ukraine must be signed before Russia resumes gas shipments to a freezing Europe.

Putin told Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek that the deal must spell out details of the monitoring team's operation. Topolanek, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, met with Putin after holding talks in Ukraine on Friday night.

The EU experts arrived in Ukraine on Friday prepared to monitor the flow of gas and act as referees in a bitter economic battle between the two former Soviet states.

But there were no gas shipments for EU monitors to track Saturday, as Russian and Ukrainian continued bickering over details of the monitoring pact.

"I hope you will succeed in persuading our Ukrainian partners to sign the documents which would set up a mechanism for transit of our gas across Ukraine," Putin said at his suburban residence outside Moscow at the start of his talks with Topolanek.

The Russian natural gas giant Gazprom halted the shipment of gas intended for Ukraine Jan. 1 after negotiations over a new gas contract broke down.

Russia then accused Ukraine of siphoning its gas intended for Europe, and finally turned off the taps on all gas shipped through Ukraine on Wednesday, ending or reducing gas supplies to more than a dozen European nations as winter turned bitterly cold across the region.

A commercial dispute over gas transit and prices triggered the current crisis, but relations between the two ex-Soviet neighbors deteriorated after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine led to the election of a pro-Western government in Kiev. Russia has been keen to restore its former power in the former Soviet sphere.

Russia says the EU monitors are needed to prevent what it described as Ukraine's theft of supplies meant for Europe -- a charge Kiev hotly denies.

Ukraine says the deal proposed by Russia will give Russian officials too much access to the Ukrainian gas transit system.

"The aim of the protocol is basically to subjugate the Ukrainian side to Gazprom," Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Yeliseyev told reporters Saturday. "This essentially paves the way for the expropriation of the Ukrainian gas transport system by the Russian side."

Volodymyr Trikolich -- deputy chief of Ukraine's state gas company, Naftogaz -- also claimed that Gazprom wanted to gain access to Ukrainian gas pumping stations and to conduct a full review of the country's entire transport system, including its storage facilities, while not giving Ukraine equal access to Gazprom's system.

EU governments have criticized both Russia and Ukraine for the crisis, saying it was unacceptable to see homes unheated, businesses closed and schools shut down in the middle of winter because of the commercial squabble.

"It has gone so far now that it's not an issue who is to blame for that," Topolanek told Putin.

Russia in the past has sold gas to Ukraine and some other former Soviet neighbors at prices significantly lower than those it charges Europe.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that Ukraine should pay a European price for the Russian gas. Last year, Russia charged Ukraine $179.50 per 1,000 cubic meters, about half what it charged its European customers.

Gazprom is currently demanding $450 per 1,000 cubic meters, a price that could hit Ukraine's consumers and heavy industry hard at a time when the country is suffering a sharp economic downturn.

The disruption of Russian gas supplies comes in the midst of a harsh winter. At least 11 people have frozen to death this week in Europe, including 10 in Poland, where temperatures have sunk to minus 13 F (minus 25 C).

Fifteen countries -- Austria, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey -- said their Russian supplies ceased Wednesday. Germany and Poland also reported substantial drops in supplies.

Ukraine said it would supply Bulgaria, where thousands of homes are without heating and factories have been shut, with 2 million cubic meters of gas daily beginning Saturday. Bulgaria's average daily consumption before the crisis was some 8 million cubic meters. Ukraine said it also will ship 1.5 million cubic meters of gas a day to neighboring Moldova.

[Associated Press; By NATALIYA VASILYEVA]

Associated Press writers Maria Danilova and Yuras Karmanau in Kiev, Douglas Birch and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.