The intrigue of Saturday’s meeting between President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, and Prime Minister and practically presidential candidate Vladimir Putin remains. On Sunday, almost 24 hours after the top-level talks, the press service of the president of Ukraine quoted him as saying, “Considerable progress has been achieved during the talks that makes one hope to expect concrete results in the nearest future, in the interests of both sides.” The press releases further informed that the next sitting of the Ukraine-Russia Intergovernmental Commission will take place in October, in Ukraine. Nothing about whether the president of Ukraine has been relieved of the anxiety over the gas problems, a mood in which he arrived at the residence of his Russian colleague in Tver.
Apparently history repeats itself. There was almost the same information vacuum after the summit in Sochi when media and experts surmised that the talks had failed. This time they decided on a cheerful allegation, but the strange thing is that nothing has been heard from Moscow where on Sunday Ukrainian Energy and Coal Minister Yurii Boiko and Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller had an umpteenth working meeting discussing ways of implementing the arrangements allegedly made by the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
SENSATION
Big hopes were placed in the summit at Zavidovo. The Party of Regions (PoR) even expected a sensational outcome. Anyway, Mykhailo Chechetov, deputy head of the PoR faction at the Verkhovna Rada, made this statement on http://nr2.com.ua/: “This time the gas mine planted in Ukraine by Tymoshenko will be defused. The gas problem will be removed from the agenda, once and for all. This will be a complex of arrangements, beginning with the energy sector and ending with the economy. One doesn’t have to invent stories about someone surrendering, presenting or parting with something for the other one’s benefit, or such stuff. There are civilized methods and mechanisms of cooperation in the energy sector. Therefore, without a doubt, a compromise will be achieved this time. However, it is too early to put our cards on the table before Viktor Yanukovych’s return from Moscow, for this could damage the course of the talks. However, the price [of Russian gas. — Author] will surely be lowered.”
Prior to Yanukovych’s visit to Moscow, RIA Novosti held a videoconference involving Ukrainian and Rus-sian experts. Aleksei Mukhin, director, Information Center (Moscow), said: “This visit doesn’t do Viktor Yanukovych any credit. He is visiting empty-handed, on the date of a convention of the ruling party. He is only too well aware that neither Medvedev, nor Putin will be able to give him much time.” He added that the president of Ukraine wanted to show Europe that Moscow couldn’t care less about the talks with Ukraine: “Ukraine is trying to play without a single trump. This is known as bluffing.”
Yanukovych, however, must have brought some trumps to Zavidovo. He may have calmly explained that the North and South pipelines Russia is trying to use to bypass the Ukrainian gas transportation system are unable to secure reliable gas supplies to Europe because they lack underground storage facilities which Ukraine has. Another trump may have been the arrangement whereby the EU will not demand compensations for disrupt service, reached when working on an agreement on the free trade area. UNIAN quotes Valerii Piatnytsky, Ukraine’s authorized representative on European integration, as saying to journalists in Brussels: “The issue of compensations, the way it was originally formulated, is no longer on the agenda.” Taras KACHKA, director, Department of International Economic Relations, Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Foodstuffs of Ukraine, added: “In this agreement we worked out absolutely acceptable formulas in terms of energy trade. We do not guarantee transit, we do not guarantee uninterrupted supplies. We guarantee that our legal framework will not interfere with energy trade… the agreement reads that neither of the contracting parties can be held responsible for disrupt service caused by a third party or by entities under the third party’s control.”
THE EUROPEAN FACTOR
This news may have given the Russian leadership food for thought. Now, in the event of a gas conflict like the one in 2009, Europe would officially side with Ukraine without demanding from it guarantees of uninterrupted transit while being blackmailed by gas prices. This may have been what made Putin and Medvedev take a walk and discuss the situation after an hour of talks behind closed doors.
Both know only too well that the European Commission regards the Ukraine-Russia-EU gas consortium as a guarantee of natural gas supplies to Europe. This issue will be discussed on September 29, in the course of EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger’s visit to Kyiv.
CYNICISM AND CORRUPTION
Information attacks on the eve of talks are standard practice. The letter of former Russian general officers affiliated with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation did not pass unnoticed in Russia. Konstantin Shurov, head of the NGO Russian Community of Ukraine, amazed at their freethinking, said: “Asking for a discount on gas supplies means asking for this discount not for the people but for oligarchs who will thus make extra profits… The Ukrainian elite has long seen itself in the West and will never be with Russia.”
Remarkably, the Russian nationalist was wholeheartedly supported by Ukrainian MP, Communist Leonid Hrach: “Should Russia allow this gas discount, it would mean supporting Yanukovych’s absolutely anti-Russian stand. He isn’t keeping any of the promises he made during the election campaign — primarily those addressing the ethnic Russians. Absolutely clearly he salutes cooperation with NATO. One doesn’t have to wait to see what will happen if Russia refuses a compromise. It is already happening. If Russia is content with having Ukraine as a NATO bridgehead, let the generals keep writing to Medvedev. This is abysmal cynicism.”
Andrei Latynin, political analyst, commented on the scandal involving the Ukrainian lobby in the Russian government. He said in 2010 alone, the department of the Russian presidential administration in charge of Ukrainian affairs received some two million dollars. This money, through various lobbyists, with whom this department is “teeming,” was used to promote Ukraine’s gas interests in the Russian media, as well as to settle “various private matters.” He refers to the situation with the generals’ letters as paradoxical, considering that this is about not only buying Russian bureaucrats, but also the whole party, CPRU, which is now a “collective lobbyist” of Ukraine’s interests in the gas talks.
Dmytro Vydryn, journalist, writer, freelance advisor to the president of Ukraine, also notes the factor of corruption in the gas issue. Addressing the videoconference, he said: “I read once that there are 12 billionaires at Russia’s Gazprom. Doesn’t this money include Russian pensions, salaries, and so on? Perhaps we should discuss this as well? How are private interests realized through government-run companies? Also, doesn’t this money include Ukrainian pensions and salaries?”
These questions are supposed to be answered by the Ukrainian and Russian leaderships, jointly or separately. However, the president of Ukraine faces the hardest task. All who watched reports from Zavidovo couldn’t fail to notice his concern and fatigue. Apparently, the 100-dollar gas discount for the Russian fleet at Sevastopol is no consolation. Ex-Finance Minister Ihor Umansky recently noted in a newspaper article that it will add some 10 billion dollars’ worth of gas discount to Ukraine’s public debt toward the end of 2012.
