Groysman Hints Tymoshenko was Paid for Signing Gas Deal with Putin in 2009

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman thinks that the current gas price is the market price, whereas the price in the gas deals signed by Yulia Tymoshenko in 2009 was unjustified, he said during a press conference on Tuesday, June 21.

According to Groysman, the price of $450 per 1,000 cubic meters was determined not by the market, but arbitrarily "by the signature of one person", who "didn’t do it for free." He says that the real market price at the time could not have been higher than $235, and everybody related to signing the gas deals had dividends from it in 2009.

Groysman also said that Ukraine needed to increase its own gas production by state companies. He said that private companies that were working on gas extraction, but taking half of the gas for it, were "robbing the Ukrainian oil and gas sector."

The Prime Minister explained that the state will help Ukrainians who cannot pay the market price for gas by providing targeted aid. He said that the next task is to increase the income of the Ukrainian people, because without it the country’s economy would fall and no outside technical aid would save it.

Source: Ukrayinska Pravda, Olena Roshchenko