FILE - An employee walks past gas pipes at the Oparivske underground storage facility in the Lviv region of Ukraine, Sept. 30, 2014.
VOA News
March 31, 2015 7:43 PM
Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a plan to extend Moscow's
current natural gas deal with Ukraine for another three months.
Russian authorities announced the extension Tuesday, just hours before a
temporary pricing agreement reached in October 2014 was set to expire.
The deal required Ukraine to make monthly payments in advance of delivery,
with Kyiv paying $365 per 1,000 cubic meters in the first quarter of 2015.
Russian energy officials recently said Ukraine would pay $348 beginning April
1.
In a separate development, a top Russian economist said Russia's 2014
annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula would cost up to $200 billion in the
next four years as the Russian economy teeters on the brink of recession.
Alexi Kudrin, Russia's finance minister from 2000 to 2011 and a former
deputy prime minister, issued his prediction Tuesday at a forum marking the
15th anniversary of Putin's rise to power.
In his televised comments, Kudrin warned that Russia — already facing
plummeting global oil prices and stiff Western economic sanctions for
supporting Ukraine's pro-Russian rebellion — is not likely to return to
economic prosperity in the near future.
Moscow's RBC news agency said that Kudrin predicted five years of economic
stagnation and that he described the economic crisis as the most serious
challenge facing Putin's widespread popularity.
The Russian economy is expected to contract 3 to 6 percent this year, its
steepest decline since Putin was first elected president in 2000.
No comments:
Post a Comment