Gas negotiations resume
June 15, 2014
Ukraine and Russia on Sunday resumed talks in Kyiv brokered by the EU in a last-ditch bid to stop Moscow from cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine on Monday, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency, citing its own sources, said.
The agency reported that the first meeting involved EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Alexei Miller, the head of Russia's state gas firm Gazprom.
Heading into the negotiations, Kyiv said it was ready to make a $1.95 billion (1.45 billion euro) payment demanded by Moscow if Russia agreed to cut its ongoing price to $326 from $485.50 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to turn off Ukraine's taps if no payment is made by 0600 UTC Monday.
A Ukrainian government source said Oettinger had conducted last-minute consultations with Yatsenyuk before Sunday's resumption of the negotiations. However, no details emerged from these talks.
The meeting came as the nation is in mourning over 49 Ukrainian servicemen killed by pro-Russian separatists when their military plane was shot down early Saturday.
Church bells rang out over Kyiv's Maidan square and hundreds bowed their heads for a moment of silence in a national day of mourning. The loss of life was the biggest suffered by Ukrainian forces in the past two months as they battle pro-Kremlin separatists over areas in the industrial east.
Lavrov responds to embassy attack
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday responded to an attack by a Ukrainian mob on Saturday that smashed the Russian embassy's windows in Kyiv and overturned cars while the police looked on.
Lavrov said the mob wanted to see bloodshed.
"Our diplomats feel that the attackers wanted to physically seize the embassy," news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying. "There are also reasons to believe that they wanted to see blood spilt." The ministry also called the lack of police response "a grave violation of Ukraine's international obligations."
hc/tj (Reuters, AFP, AP)