Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko blocked a money transfer for Russian gas and risked provoking a new supply crisis that could disrupt flows to Europe.
“It seems we have problems with payment for our energy supplies again, which is extremely deplorable,” Putin said at a meeting with United Russia party leaders at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo after a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko.
Putin’s comments come in the run-up to a Ukrainian presidential election Jan. 17, in which Tymoshenko will challenge Yushchenko and former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Analysts have interpreted Putin and Tymoshenko’s relatively constructive partnership as a tacit endorsement from Moscow.
On Sunday, Putin also called Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, to warn him of the possible disturbance, Interfax reported, citing the government press service.
Reinfeldt promised to deliver Putin’s concerns to the European Commission.
Europe watches gas ties between Moscow and Kiev very closely for signs of trouble, especially since a dispute last winter left large swaths of the EU without gas for several weeks in January.
Tymoshenko told Putin by telephone Friday that Yushchenko was impeding “the normal partnership between the Central Bank, which had the gold reserves at disposal, and the government.” The two also discussed a planned meeting in Yalta on Nov. 19 and 20, the government said in a statement.
Putin also cast the possible payment problems as a political obstacle — created by Yushchenko — rather than as a result of Ukraine’s crumbling economy.
Kiev has enough money to pay for Russian gas, Putin told the United Russia meeting, citing data from the International Monetary Fund. Kiev has gold reserves of $27 billion $28 billion, and the IMF is not opposed to using them to pay for energy supplies, he said.
Additionally, Russia has paid for its gas transit across Ukraine through the first quarter of 2010. Putin said those investments in the Ukrainian economy amounted $2.5 billion.
Yushchenko’s first deputy secretariat chief Oleksandr Shlapak said Friday that the president had urged the government to find alternative ways to pay for Russian gas instead of Tymoshenko’s proposal to get the central bank to print more money, Interfax reported.
In August, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development promised to give Ukraine a $750 million loan to pay for the fuel, but Kiev hasn’t received “a single hryvna from the EU” so far, Putin said.
The European Commission on Thursday proposed to European Union governments that they lend Ukraine 500 million euros ($736 million).