It was reported that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister of Ukraine stated that Ukraine was ready for sanctioning Russia, forbidding any transit transportation through Ukraine, including flights from Russia to Europe and supplying gas to Europe from Russia. Ukraine will utilize par of aid funds from IMF and consider asking for help from the World Bank to realize energy independence.
In last Monday, Ukrainian government ever showed that it planed to follow the western to sanction Russia, aiming at Russian finance, energy and military industry. In last Friday, Yatsenyuk said that Ukraine prepared for sanctioning Russia, prohibiting any transit transportation through Ukraine, including Russian flights to Europe and Russia supply gas to Europe through Ukraine. Ukrainian parliament will vote for final sanctions on Tuesday.
Yatsenyuk showed that Ukraine also prepared a sanction list, containing 172 Russian citizens, 65 enterprises. Most of those are Russian enterprises. The reasons for sanction were supporting terrorism, merger Crimea by Russia and violation to territorial integrity of Ukraine. Specific sanctions on those individuals and enterprises contain freezing assets, prohibiting operation of enterprises, forbidding privatization on national assets, refusing to provide license, partial or complete prohibition all of Russian transportation to Europe crossing through Ukraine – including aviation and gas.
Yatsenyuk claimed that Ukraine had no choices. Ukraine would use part of 17 billion dollars aid funds provided by IMF, to realize energy independence. Ukraine may also seek help from World Bank. In May, Ukraine received the first aid funds from IMF, total 3.2 billion dollars. Yatsenyuk estimates that sanctions on Russia of Ukraine will cause losses of 7 billion dollars. Russia is one of the most important trade partners for Ukraine, next to EU. Without doubt, Russia will continue insisting on its original plans, resisting Ukrainian goods, reducing cooperation, pressing and threatening.
Nearly 50% of gas in Ukraine comes from Russia. Import volume was 27.7 billion cubic meters in 2013. If the proposal for sanctions was passed, gas supply to Europe will suffer from heavy losses. 30% of gas in Europe is imported from Russia. In June, Gazprom claimed that Gazprom stopped supplying gas to Ukraine for Ukraine defaulting payments of gas while Gazprom still continued supplying gas to Europe. The total volume was 1.8 hundred billion cubic meters.
Gazprom has a northern transmission pipe to transmit gas to Europe and other gas importers bypassing Ukraine. Meanwhile, southern pipe which is still being built will supply gas to central and northern of Europe. In last Friday, Transneft, the Russian state-owned pipe operator warned that if Ukrainian proposal passed through, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech would suffer from massive losses.
