"Ukraine and Russia have reached a principal agreement in their gas relations," head of the Presidential Secretariat Oleh Rybachuk said at a news briefing. "Otherwise, Ukraine would not have received natural gas [from Russia] and would have had a poor chance at winning the case in Stockholm."
Late last year, Kiev said it would go to the Stockholm court to protest Russia's plans to raise gas prices for Ukraine to the European level if the dispute was not settled diplomatically.
Rybachuk said the Ukrainian government was not represented in RosUkrEnergo, the sole supplier of Russian and Turkmen gas to Ukraine. The company, which is equally owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom and Austria's Raiffeisen Bank, was chosen to form a joint venture with Ukrainian national energy company Naftogaz under the January 4 deal between Russia and Ukraine. The deal ended the gas price dispute that culminated in Russia briefly cutting off gas supplies to the former Soviet republic.
