KIEV, November 23 (RIA Novosti) - Director of the Russian Political Research Institute Sergei Markov said Wednesday that a "gas war" between Russia and Ukraine is inevitable after the postponement of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit to Ukraine.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov had originally planned to visit Ukraine on November 23, but during a phone conversation with Ukraine's Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov, agreed to determine a new date for the meeting after coordinating the issue of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine and its transit via Ukrainian territory in 2006.
"The Ukrainian leadership is counting on the fact that Russia has its interests and Ukraine has its strength: a gas pipe to Europe and support from its European partners and the United States. The Ukrainian leadership is therefore maintaining a very rigid stance and in fact the talks are collapsing," Markov said.
"Ukraine is leading things to a gas war and wants all issues to be resolved through a harsh standoff," he said.
The countries' leaders had previously reached an agreement on switching to European standards for gas payment calculations for 2006. However, Ukraine has now done a U-turn, "having realized that this way things would be substantially worse for them," Markov said.
"Ukraine is a neighboring brother-country and, unfortunately, its government contains anti-Russian forces... meaning, under current conditions, a gas war is practically inevitable," he said.
Gleb Pavlovsky, president of the Efficient Policy Foundation, said "there is no political sub-current to the postponement of the visit... The postponement happened for quite transparent reasons, as the main issue of tariffs had not been prepared in advance of the meeting."
Ukraine may be looking for "either some kind of very complex system of agreement through the Common Economic Space [Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine] or for full monetization," he said.
Vyacheslav Igrunov, the director of the International Institute for Humanitarian-Political Research, said "there is, in fact, a political sub-current to the postponement of the visit... Ukraine's uncompromising position to leave everything as it is will not lead to any development in relations between our countries.
"If Ukraine wants Russia to remain a serious trade partner, it should hold dialog with Moscow," he said.
The Russian political commentators are in Kiev, taking part in a seminar dedicated to the first anniversary of Ukraine's "orange revolution".
