Perhaps the main result of Premier Pustovoitenko's visit to Moscow was not so much the signing of a protocol scheduling payments on gas supply debts to the Russia's Gazprom as the sudden possibility of handing over to the company part of the export pipelines running through Ukraine and underground gas storage facilities.
There is nothing new about Gazprom's decision-makers urging Ukraine to pay with precisely that which enables one to dictate gas policy. Many still remember the scandal blocking a joint Russian-Ukrainian gas project whereby Ukraine's contribution would be two of Europe's largest underground gas storage facilities in Lviv and Transcarpathian oblasts and some of the arterial pipelines heading westward. That time the bureaucrats failed to prove the project's expediency. Most likely to avoid scandal, Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin stressed that Russia was not pressuring Ukraine or forcing Kyiv to apply certain forms of debt payments for gas. His Ukrainian counterpart declared in Moscow that handing over that part of public property was impossible, because it was not entered in the privatization lists for 1998, but the possibility was very likely to appear before long. Just as likely, the issue will be debated in Parliament more than once, whereupon Verkhovna Rada will be condemned for lacking a constructive approach.
As it is, the Ukrainian delegation returned from Moscow after signing a protocol whereby Ukrhazprom (Ukrainian Gas) is to pay Russia's Gazprom $300 million before October 1, Motor-Sich will have to part with $30 million in April, while Interhaz and United Energy Systems of Ukraine will submit their $400 million repayment schedules in the second quarter. The production association Zoria and the joint stock company Konstar will supply equipment to Russia to pay off their debts. Russia will receive most of the $900 million stated in the protocol in "live" money. In other words, the schemes previously used by the Republic Corporation and Unified Energy Systems no longer work and Mr. Pustovoitenko did not specify exactly where Ukraine was supposed to get the money.
Photo:
CIS heads of government met under Viktor Chernomyrdin's orders.







