“Today we have received another refusal from Naftogaz Ukrainy to accept Russian gas into its system, this time via the Uzhgorod corridor.

Our request to transit 22.2 million cubic meters daily via the Sudja GMS – Uzhgorod GMS route to Slovakia, which is especially hit now by the natural gas supply shortage, has been routinely rejected by Naftogaz. Naftogaz keeps bringing forward the same argument it formulated when blocking our supplies to the Balkans: they demand some “guarantees of transit over a continuous time period”.

With the contract for the Russian gas transit in force until 2013 as well as the Terms of Reference for the monitoring… signed yesterday by all the parties concerned, are there any other guarantees of long-term transit needed?! It has been clear for a long time to everybody in the world that the Ukrainian side must pass from lame excuses over to concrete actions,” said Gazprom Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee Alexander Medvedev.