Russian and Ukrainian officials have not reached a deal leading to the resumption of Russian gas supplies, squelching hopes for an end to a dispute that has left parts of Europe in the cold and dark.
EU representatives started work in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, to monitor the flow of gas on Friday, offering an independent assessment that was critical to sealing a bargain.
But Russia said it would only restart pumping gas to Europe via Ukraine after a written deal was signed.
PHOTO: EPA
Russia wants monitors in place to prevent what it described as Ukraine’s theft of supplies meant for Europe — a charge Kiev hotly denies.
“Our goal is to show who is to blame for stealing gas,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said. “Such thievery can’t be left unaccountable.”
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko rejected the notion.
“Ukraine is not stealing gas,” he told reporters angrily.
Gazprom halted all natural gas shipments through Ukraine on Wednesday, ending or reducing gas supplies to more than a dozen European nations amid a pricing dispute with Kiev.
Russia in the past has sold gas to Ukraine and some other former-Soviet neighbors at prices significantly less than European prices.
Medvedev said on Friday that Ukraine should pay a European price for the Russian gas.
Last year, Russia charged Ukraine US$179.50 per 1,000m³, about half what it charged its European customers.
Russia’s last offer before talks broke down was US$250, but Gazprom said the offer no longer stands after Ukraine rejected it and that it will charge Ukraine US$450.
EU governments have criticized both Russia and Ukraine for the gas crisis, saying it was unacceptable to see homes unheated, businesses closed and schools shut down in the middle of winter because of the commercial squabble.
Russia, Ukraine and the EU said the final agreement could be finalized soon, but officials remained coy about what prevented the deal from being completed on Friday as hoped.
Ukraine’s Naftogaz state gas company spokesman Valentyn Zemlyansky said it was resisting what he described as the Russian push for control over Ukraine’s gas transportation network.
Gazprom chief executive officer Alexei Miller pledged that Gazprom would resume shipments to Europe once the monitoring teams deployed to pipeline pumping stations across Ukraine — a country roughly the size of South Africa or Texas.
But Medvedev emphasized that Russia would resume deliveries to Europe only after a written agreement was in place.
“Regrettably, we don’t have any faith left in Ukraine’s good intentions,” he said.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country holds the EU presidency, visited Kiev on Friday to help wrap up the monitoring deal.
“We want to help overcome the crisis of confidence,” Topolanek said after talks with Yushchenko. “Russia wants to ship gas, Ukraine wants to transit it. This problem must be solved.”
Yushchenko insisted that his nation “religiously fulfills its transit mission.”
“But there is one problem: This gas must be supplied from Russia,” he said.
Ukraine had initially opposed including Russians in the EU monitoring team, but finally accepted their presence on Friday, Miller said.
Ukrainian and the EU officials confirmed that Russians officials were welcome to join the mission.
“It is now imperative that the gas starts to flow,” the EU said in a statement.
Once gas shipments resume, it “will take at least three days” for the first gas to reach European consumers, EU spokesman Ferran Terradellas said.
The halt in gas supplies has left European nations struggling to cope during a harsh winter.
At least 11 people have frozen to death this week in Europe, including 10 in Poland, where temperatures have sunk to minus 25ºC.
Fifteen countries — Austria, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey — said their Russian supplies ceased on Wednesday.
Germany and Poland reported substantial drops in supplies.
Naftogaz promised the first gas supplies would go to Bulgaria, where thousands of homes are without heating and factories have been shut.
The Sofia Zoo in the Bulgarian capital declared an emergency on Friday after being left with no central heating.
The zoo was using electric heaters for its 1,300 animals, some of which needed temperatures of at least 20ºC, zoo director Ivan Ivanov said.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS