Kyiv estimates Russia lost $5 billion in attempts to block Ukraine’s gas imports
Russian Gazprom tried to block Ukrainian gas imports from Europe and spent billions of dollars on these unsuccessful attempts, according to Yuriy Vitrenko, the Managing Director for Business Development at the national joint-stock company Naftogaz of Ukraine.
"We buy gas from the largest European gas companies. A lot of them produce gas themselves. Many also buy gas from other producing companies, including from Gazprom, which prevented us from buying gas in Europe. According to current information, even from Russian newspapers, Gazprom spent $5 billion on unsuccessful attempts to block our imports from Europe," Vitrenko wrote on his Facebook page.
He noted that Ukraine is grateful to those companies that were not afraid to strain relations with Gazprom by selling gas to Ukraine. "In most months, the market prices for the European gas were lower than in the contract with Gazprom,” Vitrenko noted.
Recently, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced that Ukraine had lived a year without Russian gas. "An attempt to bring Ukraine to its knees using energy blackmail failed,” Poroshenko emphasized.
Recently, it was reported that Naftogaz supported the proposal to organize a tripartite meeting with the European Commission and Russia on the gas issue in Brussels. The company stressed that in the issue of gas import for the Ukrainian market, the company is guided by two criteria: cost and reliability.