KIEV
Ukraine's Interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, during a Council of Ministers meeting on Tuesday, has said "the government's position concerning talks with Moscow remains unchanged; bilateral meetings are not possible in the current conditions without the presence of the U.S. and the EU."
However, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday voiced Russia’s readiness for dialogue with Petro Poroshenko, winner of Sunday's historic presidential polls in Ukraine, saying that "mediators", meaning the West, are not necessary for talks.
The statements from both sides followed Monday's exit polls in Ukraine’s presidential elections where 48-year-old billionaire Poroshenko claimed absolute victory with 55.9 percent of the vote, while former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko received only 12.9 percent of the vote.
Yatsenyuk said the Ukrainian cabinet will be allow until May 29 so as to sign an agreement between Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz and Russia’s energy giant Gazprom to settle their energy dispute.
Nevertheless, Ukraine’s interim prime minister said "Unless an agreement is inked, the parties will go before the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce," the Swedish body accepted as a neutral center for the resolution of east, west trade disputes.
He added that the country is ready to pay its debts to Russia for the natural gas it uses, but only in accordance with market conditions.
Russia had threatened to cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine unless its debt, currently at $3.5 billion, was paid by June 1.
To solve the gas dispute between the two countries, the European bloc also put forward a new proposal Monday, which would see Ukraine pay $2 billion to Gazprom by Thursday in order to bring Russia back to the negotiating table by Friday to discuss gas prices, which Gazprom raised in April.
Ukraine's prime minister continued saying that they are still waiting on Russian answer concerning 2.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas, which Kiev claims Moscow blocked after confiscating Chernomorneftegaz, a gas company based in the region of Crimea.
The Crimea-based energy company was among the Moscow-aligned firms targeted by the sanctions imposed by the EU earlier this month, due to their links to Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March.
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