Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will pay a two-day working visit to Germany on Friday to discuss with Chancellor Angela Merkel the current gas crisis and the idea to launch a European consortium that would facilitate the resumption of the gas transit to Europe.
“Talks will focus on vital issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as on the situation with the transit of Russian gas to European consumers through the territory of Ukraine and joint effort to overcome the global financial and economic crisis,” he said.
On Thursday Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed in a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yuschenko an innovative solution to enable Gazprom to resume transiting supplies of gas to European customers via Ukraine.
Putin elaborated a joint European effort was necessary to promote gas transit resumption to Europe.
“We propose to our European partners to share transit risks, to organize a consortium that would buy the gas volume from Gazprom and pump it immediately to Ukraine and launch the transit. Our Ukrainian partners have no other grounds to impede the resumption of the transit,” Putin said.
He said that from Gazprom”s side the flow of gas was open, but despite all of its efforts, and all of the requests from European partners Ukraine had continued to refuse Gazprom”s daily requests to transit gas to Europe.
