Ukraine and Russia could implement "mutual offset" of some of their financial claims to each other, which are considered in national and international courts/arbitrages, until the New Year's Eve, and thus sign gas agreements on the transit and supply of Russian gas to Ukraine after January 1, 2020.
This viewpoint was expressed in a commentary to the Ukrinform news agency by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine, President of Grant Thornton Ukraine Oleksandr Chalyi, who participates in the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum organized by the Kerber Foundation.
It is worth mentioning that later on the website of Ukrinform (which belongs to the state), the publication with Chalyi's comments was removed, but the page was kept in Google cache. In order to confirm the information published, Apostrophe addressed directly to Oleksandr Chalyi, who told that he presented such a viewpoint to the journalists of this news agency.
In addition, during his comments Chalyi mentioned that "Ukraine as a state disputes the debt to Russia in London court, which arose in connection with the granting of a loan of 3bn dollars by the Russian Federation at the end of 2013. At the same time, the key issue that does not allow to reach a compromise in the gas negotiations with Russia is Moscow's demand to Ukraine to abandon the decisions of the Stockholm arbitration, according to which Gazprom is obliged to pay Naftogaz, taking into account the penalties, as well as 3bn dollars.
Taking into account the fact that these amounts almost coincide and that Naftogaz is a 100% state-owned company, Chalyi believes that "in terms of economic feasibility and the need for Ukraine to avoid extremely high technogenic and political risks next winter, it is necessary to set off those financial claims, which will pave the way for reaching a mutually acceptable compromise in the gas negotiations with Russia.
The diplomat also assesses as real statements of Naftogaz's management that the termination of the transit of Russian gas may lead to a drop in Ukraine's GDP by 0.7%. But in this case, according to the diplomat's statement, "politically responsible for the possible energy crisis and a significant drop in Ukraine's GDP should be not the heads of Naftogaz, but the Minister of Energy of Ukraine and President Zelensky".
In his turn, Chalyi positively assessed yesterday's telephone conversation between the Presidents of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, during which the issues of gas transit and Russian gas supplies to Ukraine after January 1, 2020 were discussed.
In his opinion, this was "a timely and necessary step to reach a possible future strategic agreement on gas between the two countries, since the negotiations in the trilateral format (Ukraine-Russia-EU) at the ministerial level have almost reached an impasse.
"Consultations on the transit of Russian gas to Europe should be an integral part of the future negotiations in the Normandy format on December, 9 this year. If President Zelensky succeeds in implementing the first three points of the Minsk agreements on troop disengagement, prisoner of war exchange and a complete ceasefire, this is likely to have a positive impact on the gas talks with Russia. On the other hand, if President Zelensky succeeds in finding a mutually acceptable solution to the gas issue with the President of the Russian Federation, it will contribute to achieving a sustainable ceasefire in eastern Ukraine," Chalyi summed up.
We shall remind you that on 28 October, trilateral consultations were held in Brussels between the European Commission, Ukraine and Russia on the transit of Russian gas to the European market through Ukraine.
The gas transit contract signed 10 years ago expires at the end of 2019. Russia proposed to extend the current transit contract by 1 year. Ukraine and the European Commission support the conclusion of a 10-year gas transit agreement.
Previous rounds of trilateral gas transit negotiations were held on 17 July 2018, 21 January and 19 September 2019.