OREANDA-NEWS. January 14, 2009. Gazprom’s headquarters has hosted today a meeting of Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and members of the Commission for the monitoring of gas transit via Ukraine.

The meeting participants visited the Central Production and Dispatch Department. Gazprom’s Management Committee Chairman Alexey Miller informed Vladimir Putin and the Commission members that the request for gas transit on January 13 had been 76.6 million cubic meters and contemplated meeting the requests from Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Macedonia and Greece in full. Furthermore, a separate request was made for the transit of 22.2 million cubic meters of gas to Slovakia. However, not single a cubic meter of gas was injected into the Ukrainian gas transmission system, since access to it was denied.

“Ukraine has blocked Russian gas transit to Europe. The linepipe tap hasn’t been opened in Ukraine. The situation has not changed since the command was given to resume the transit of Russian gas across the Ukrainian territory,” said Alexey Miller.

Gazprom’s Management Committee Chairman has vividly shown at an electronic map of transport routes for gas exports that Ukraine was not accepting Russian gas into its gas transmission system.

“The Ukrainian gas transmission system may be in such a technical condition that it is incapable of pumping gas. It is possible. However this needs to be voiced directly and frankly. We need to understand what transmission system we are dealing with and whether the Ukrainian gas transmission system is generally capable to pump gas nowadays,” stated Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The meeting participants discussed the ongoing crisis situation and agreed that Ukraine must unblock the transit of Russian gas to Europe.