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Russia calls on EU help to avert Ukraine gas crisis

14 November 2009 10:54 (UTC +04:00)

Baku -APA. A senior Russian official appealed Friday for the European Union to enact "preemptive measures" to prevent another gas crisis in Ukraine this winter, AFP reported.
"We call for the European Union to actively join in a package of preemptive measures, including financial assistance, to ensure uninterrupted transit of energy resources through Ukraine," said Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s envoy to the European Union.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday made a fresh warning to Ukraine, saying Moscow would cut supplies should Kiev attempt to remove Russian gas from pipelines without paying.
Chizhov said President Dmitry Medvedev would press this issue at the EU-Russia summit in Stockholm next week.
Chizhov said Ukraine was dragging its feet on liberalising its gas market and was unlikely to meet International Monetary Fund demands to increase domestic tariffs any time soon.
"It would be out of the question to expect one of the presidential candidates in Ukraine to take this step lightly" on the eve of the election scheduled for January 17, he said.
He said Ukraine has gas reserves stored underground that are almost as large as the total reserves of all EU countries combined, but questioned whether Kiev would use them to ensure uninterrupted transit to Europe.
"Either this will be used in the interests of transit, or it will be used in the interests of satisfying its own demand, at the expense of transit," Chizhov said. "This is the key question and it is primarily political."
France’s Minister for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche said during a visit to Kiev that a new crisis would be in no one’s interests.
With the global economic crisis "the level of energy consumption has dropped, prices have dropped and competition is rising," he said. "So I don’t see where the interest is in a new gas crisis at the moment."
Many inefficient factories in Ukraine rely heavily on natural gas to function.
Fitch Ratings agency downgraded Ukraine’s national long-term rating from "AA" to "AA-" on Friday as the ex-Soviet country continues to suffer from the effects of the global economic slowdown.
Next Wednesday’s Stockholm summit comes at a "crucial moment for the EU" as the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect, Medvedev’s top foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said in comments reported by ITAR-TASS news agency.
He predicted that Russia would find dialogue with the EU "more predictable" after the treaty comes into effect.
"The EU isn’t an easy partner for anyone, neither for the United States, nor for China, nor for Japan," Prikhodko said, quoted by ITAR-TASS.
Outside of difficult subjects, such as the Caucasus, human rights and energy, Russia also has a tricky relationship with Sweden.
"I hope we’ll have constructive discussions rather than a heated exchange of criticism," Chizhov told a separate press conference in Brussels.
He added that comments by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in August last year about Russia’s war with Georgia "were not very helpful," adding that Moscow had sent "messages" to Stockholm, after those comments, which were "received and well understood".
Bildt evoked the Nazis in his condemnation of Russia’s action in Georgia, saying that no state had the right to militarily intervene in another simply because it had some nationals there.
"We have reason to remember how Hitler used this very doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine and attack substantial parts of central Europe," Bildt had said, provoking fury in Moscow.
The Russian ambassador said those remarks were useful "neither for the bilateral relations between Russia and Sweden, nor for the atmospherics of the Russia-EU dialogue during the Swedish (EU) presidency."