Ukraine eyes gas imports from Romania
KIEV, May 19 (Reuters) - Ukraine is interested in importing Romanian natural gas to diversify its supplies, a senior Ukrainian energy official said on Tuesday.
"They (Romania) are looking for a market, while this gas is interesting for us as a diversification (of supplies)," Ihor Prokopiv, the president of Ukraine's gas transport monopoly Ukrtransgaz, told reporters.
Prokopiv said Romania was likely to have up to 2 billion cubic meters of free gas available for exports in 2016.
Ukraine, which used to cover most of its gas needs with supplies from Russia, has started buying gas from the European Union too in a bid to reduce bills and lessen its energy dependence on Moscow.
Kiev now buys 50 percent of its imported gas from Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, the rest is supplied by Russia, according to Ukrtransgaz data.
Romania already exports its gas to Moldova, Ukraine's south-western neighbour. The pipeline that links the Romanian and Moldovan gas transport systems has the capacity to pump up to 1.5 billion cubic metres of gas per year.
In April, Ukraine signed an interim deal for cheaper supplies of gas from Russia for the next three months.
Under the deal Ukraine will buy Russian gas at $248 per thousand cubic metres in April-June. This compares with the $329 it was paying for the same volume under the agreement for the past winter.
In today's Daily Vertical, RFE/RL's Brian Whitmore looks at the strange endgame in the Donbas:
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
Top NATO, Russian officials to meet in Brussels
BRUSSELS (AP) -- NATO officials say the alliance secretary-general will hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the first such contacts since they met in January.
According to one NATO official, secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and Lavrov will meet Tuesday in Brussels, and are expected to discuss NATO-Russia relations, including military-to-military lines of communications and the need for transparency in military activities.
The NATO official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with alliance custom, said the talks will also address the importance of fully implementing the Minsk agreements, which are designed to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
NATO accuses Russia of backing the pro-Moscow rebels in Ukraine's east, and relations between the alliance and Russia have dropped to their lowest point since the Cold War.
An excerpt:
VELYKA NOVOSILKA, Ukraine -- About once a week, Leonid Sholkovsky has a reccurring dream about the battlefields from which he collects the remains of fallen Ukrainian soldiers.
In the dream, a young fighter is walking toward Sholkovsky, stepping over the twisted scraps of military vehicles and dead soldiers strewn across the blackened fields of eastern Ukraine. The solider has a helmet on, and there is a blue and yellow patch on the shoulder of his camouflage jacket, so Sholkovsky knows the soldier could be one of the dozens of Ukrainian men he has sent home in a body bag over the last six months.
What Sholkovsky doesn’t understand is why the young solider is shaking his finger at him.
“He’s either trying to warn me of something, or telling me not to finish what I’m doing,” Sholkovsky said. “Every time I go into a church now, I light a candle for that soldier, whoever he is.”
Few would envy Sholkovsky’s work, not least because of the nightmares that come with it.