Statements by the Ukrainian party of the fact that Ukraine realizes the responsibility for ensuring continuous gas transit through its territory is a mere rant with absolutely no grounds. In violation of the international law, since the beginning of 2009 Ukraine has been siphoning off the natural gas intended for European consumers. Later Ukraine has fully stopped gas transit to Europe. It’s obvious that such a responsible attitude is unlikely to be aimed at meeting transit obligations and ensuring energy security in Europe.

The next step aimed to escalate the crisis situation around Russian gas transit to Europe was taken by Ukraine when it thwarted signing of the protocol on establishing a Multilateral Commission to monitor gas transit through Ukraine. Thus, due to Ukraine’s fault, an independent monitoring mechanism was not created.

We believe that in a situation like this only multilateral monitoring with participation of every stakeholder will provide for secure gas transmission to European consumers through Ukraine, which grossly broke its transit obligations with no respect either to the existing contract, or to the Energy Charter. However, the Ukrainian party refused to form Multilateral Commission of observers with participation of Gazprom, Russian Ministry of Energy, specialized auditing companies and companies purchasing Russian gas. Instead, Ukraine limits participation in monitoring activities only to the Ukrainian party and the European Commission. That means, that our gas transit to our consumers is proposed to be monitored without our participation altogether.

Having considered this, we think it necessary to immediately set up a Multilateral Commission to secure urgent recovery of gas transit through Ukraine to Europe. To facilitate this, top managers of major gas consuming companies will sign shortly the protocol prepared by Gazprom on establishment of International expert commission on transit of natural gas through the territory of Ukraine.