Ukraine: Russia Likely to Keep Gas Contract

Опубликовано: 08 Май 2012

Russia will not revise the controversial gas contract with Ukraine, political experts in Ukraine believe. The former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymosheko is currently in prison for signing the contract that the government says put Ukraine at a disadvantage.

"[Russia’s] Moral, political and diplomatic support for Tymoshenko is actually a signal that nobody will simply review gas agreements," said the Director of Ukraine’s Institute of Global Strategies Vadym Karasiov at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

Others, like the Head of the Ukrainian Barometer Sociological Service Viktor Nebozhenko, believe that Putin’s government will continue to impose one-sided agreements on Ukraine.

Ukraine will not try to change the contract either, and will fulfill its part of the deal, the Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy told the press in April. He added that Tymoshenko might be released from prison if an agreement is reached on all the other points of contention between Ukraine and the European Union (EU).

Tymoshenko enjoys support from the EU and the United States, who view her imprisonment as political persecution. Tymoshenko’s daughter Eugenia met with the German Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger in Berlin on Monday, to discuss her mother’s imprisonment and rule of law in Ukraine.