Ukraine to Provide Moldova with Gas, Offers Gazprom Discount

At a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC), it was decided to consider gas supplies assistance to Moldova.

“We made a decision to instruct the Cabinet of Ministers to consider this issue. We realise that we can provide such assistance to the Republic of Moldova in the near future,” NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov announced.

According to him, Prime Minister of Moldova Natalia Gavrilița addressed the Government of Ukraine with such a request.

“The Prime Minister of Ukraine received a letter from his counterpart asking him to help with gas to avoid the difficult situation that has developed given the blackmail that Gazprom currently commits there,” the NSDC Secretary explained. He added that the gas would be supplied on credit, not for money, and later Moldova would return the supplied resource.

On 22 October, the Government of Moldova announced a 30-day state of emergency due to a critical energy situation.

In addition, the National Security and Defence Council considered the issue of gas supplies to Europe. Given the difficult situation in the EU gas market, Kyiv said it was ready to pump an additional 55 billion cubic metres of gas to the EU above the 40 billion cubic metres that Gazprom is entitled to pump under the transit contract. Ukraine will also provide Moldova with a certain volume of gas.

As President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky stated in a comment to Bloomberg, special conditions are offered for pumping all the additional volume of gas.

“Ukraine offers this additional capacity to all potential transit countries… We would like to see European companies as clients, but there are also additional capacities for Gazprom. And with a discount compared to the current transit tariff, I can assume that this discount may reach 50%,” Zelensky said.

He added that Ukraine was discussing a gas transit proposal with Berlin and Brussels.

At the same time, in a written comment to AFP, the President of Ukraine accused the Russian Federation of organising a gas crisis in Europe, calling on the European Union to coordinate its response with Ukraine.

According to Zelensky, Russia refuses to increase its supplies, maintains the deficit and rising gas prices in order to achieve the commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Germany with Russia.

Bohdan Marusyak