OREANDA-NEWS. Top manager of the Ukrainian company Naftogaz, Andrei Favorov, told the Russian media that Ukraine is ready for honest negotiations with Russia on gas supply and transit. Favorov suggested that the meeting could be held after the elections to the Verkhovna Rada. According to him, the issue is purely commercial in nature and should be discussed by company representatives, but the parties want to turn it into a political game.

“Colleagues want to make political negotiations of this and set conditions that are unacceptable in advance - to refuse to win in Stockholm (in February 2018, the arbitration court ordered Gazprom to pay $ 2.56 billion to the Ukrainian side - Lanty.ru comment). We are ready for honest, open negotiations”, he said. At the end of June, the first deputy head of the Russian government’s office, Sergei Prikhodko, declared that Moscow was ready to maintain gas transit through Ukraine after 2019 after a fair settlement of disputes between Gazprom and Naftogaz. In response, the head of the Ukrainian company, Andrei Kobolev, said that Naftogaz would retain the opportunity to sue Gazprom, if the Russian monopolist does not keep promises to preserve the transit of fuel through the country.

The current contract for gas transit from Russia through the territory of Ukraine expires on December 31, 2019th. At the end of this year, Russia also plans to launch two gas pipelines - Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream. Both go around the Ukrainian territory. In Kiev, fear that because of this, the country's gas transportation system will be unclaimed.

Earlier it was reported that the profit of Naftogaz of Ukraine by the end of 2018 fell 3.4 times, but this did not prevent the head of the state-owned company from encouraging themselves with a premium of UAH 261 million (about 689 million rubles). This was reported by the Ukrainian business media