Sergei Kupriyanov Quotations

Ukraine refused, which shows that the Ukrainian authorities planned a conflict from the very beginning, i.e. to tap, or rather steal, gas intended for European consumers.

Ukraine is taking the gas from our European partners. We decided to compensate the stolen gas for our partners.

We have information from the ground that shows Ukraine has started illegally siphoning off Russian gas destined for European consumers.

We are all at work, all the services are prepared for signing the necessary agreements in the remaining eight hours before the end of the day and the year.

We are fully prepared to restrict gas supplies to Ukraine after December 31, if there is no contract.

It is possible that some of our partners are getting less than they would like.

Rejection of the solutions we proposed will play a very bad havoc on the Ukrainian economy and, which is most unfortunate, on the Ukrainian people.

Literally 40 minutes ago, we received an official answer from the Ukrainian side. The answer said: 'We cannot sign it' and that is all.

Yesterday, we made a proposal on how to break out of this very knotty situation. We were ready to meet the Ukrainian people's needs halfway and to provide them with normal conditions of work during the winter, the most complex period of the year.

The problem must be solved in the coming days. This conflict absolutely has a negative impact on Russia's image and reputation.

We have been forced to start the operation to lower the pressure in Ukraine's gas pipeline system.

We have fully completed work to restore gas supplies to Europe. At this time we are carrying out deliveries to European consumers in full.

We believe it will be extremely difficult, or impossible, to be more precise, for the Ukrainian authorities to explain to their people the reason for such a short-sighted policy.

We have signed a contract based on a European price formula, which allows us to begin selling gas at a price of $230 for 1,000 cubic meters starting from January 1.

The price for natural gas and other energy resources has increased several times in recent years. And leaving the price for Ukraine unchanged or slightly raising it would be unreasonable.

The position expressed by the European Commission today was just the position we were responding to on Tuesday.

But our proposals were turned down, which means that the Ukrainian authorities were tuned to confrontational moods from the very start.

We understand that it is cold, but it is not only cold in Ukraine. We are currently providing more gas for all our consumers, both in Russia and abroad, and we do not plan to put up with the fact that gas destined for European consumers is being used in Ukraine and is not even reaching the border. Nobody gave Ukraine the right to take more gas than the contracted volume.

On Dec. 31, we got a document from Turkmenistan saying that in line with our contract for January, they are shipping 141.7 million cubic meters per day. This volume is the maximum pipelines from Turkmenistan can carry. We were not aware of any gas going to Ukraine. That would have been impossible.

All our contracts are being carried out in full.

The official response has been received: Ukraine has turned down our offer.

If there is no contract, gas delivery to Ukraine's users will be stopped at 10 o'clock in the morning on January 1.

In this situation, which is the fault of the Ukrainian side, we have been forced to start reducing pressure in the pipeline to Ukraine.

However, we will not put Ukrainian people into a difficult situation.

For the first five days of this week, Ukraine siphoned off nearly 400 million cubic meters of gas. This is a very large volume, which is comparable to our supplies for Germany for three days.