Mariupol taken hostage by Russian Gazprom squeezing debts out of Ukraine
By Vitaly Kniazhansky, The Day
Bohdan Kliuk, President of Ukrhazpom (Ukrainian Natural Gas), and Sales Manager Yaroslav Marchuk returned from Moscow after negotiating as official envoys renewed supplies from their Russian counterpart, Gazprom, to Mariupol’s Illich and Azovstal steel plants.
No official communiquО has followed but it is clear that Ukraine will not be able to pay its debts earlier than August or September, while the agreed schedule set the deadline in early April, The Day learned from an Ukrhazprom spokesman who added that the company is now burdened with all Ukraine’s gas liabilities, actually formed because of the gas market’s disorientation due to incompetent Cabinet management. Premier Pustovoitenko says Ukraine owes some $750 million worth for natural gas supplied by Russian commercial and government exporters in 1997 as of March 1. Ukrhazprom experts claim, however, that the company’s arrears on gas supplies to industries, household consumers, budget, and municipal sectors is in excess of $400 million.
Now that the weather is warming and gas consumption dropping, the Ukrainian government is breathing a sigh of relief, feeling somewhat less dependent on Moscow’s demanding creditors. By April 1 Ukraine wad to supply Russia with $60 million worth of industrial products and equipment. The deliveries made came to $12 million. On April 14, a shipment of gas-pumping engines was to be made. It was not. Cabinet guarantees did not help and Moscow dealt a preventive blow. Russia’s Gazprom stopped supplies to Mariupol, where Ukraine’s largest metallurgical plants are. It is possible that this tactic was aimed at both making Ukraine pay her debts and elbowing her out of the metallurgy market.
The management of Mariupol’s steel works, now held hostage by the lack of natural gas, turned to the Ukrainian President for help, hoping to sign a direct contract between Mariupol and Moscow. Analysts do not think this likely, because this would not be in Kyiv’s interest. Perhaps, but whose interest would it serve to tear up all Ukrainian-Russian accords that have been signed? The natural gas blow aimed at Mariupol is not in the context of any.
