Gazprom Ready to Supply Gas to Donbass

22:01     26 February, 2015

The European Union is trying to convene a three-way meeting with the Ukrainian and Russian energy ministers to resolve the conflict over gas supplies to  eastern Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reports.

 European Commission Vice President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic proposed to consider the issue of gas supplies from Russia to Donetsk and Luhansk separately from the Russian-Ukrainian gas package. Sergei Kupriyanov, Gazprom spokesman, said that the company is ready to start gas supplies to Donbass beyond the discussion of the Russian-Ukrainian gas issue. However, the experts warn that direct delivery of gas to PRD and PRL will create a risk for Gazprom to be included in the sanctions list of the West.

  On  February 25, it became known, that Kiev stopped gas supplies to Donbass. In this connection Russian President Vladimir Putin said, that Kiev’s policy "smells of genocide", as there is already signs of the humanitarian disaster in this region.

Earlier this week Aelxei Miller, the head of the state-controlled gas company, declared, that Gazprom would interrupt gas supplies to Ukraine, unless it received advance payment for gas deliveries in full. "We hope that gas supplies will not be interrupted. But this does not depend only on us, it depends on the implementation of financial commitments of our Ukrainian partners," told Miller.  In this case Europe could face a gas crisis at the end of the week, as a large portion of Russia’s gas supplies to the EU is currently transited via Ukraine.