Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) was happy to say that there had never been a more professional group of people in office in Kiev that Viktor Yushchenko's (left) team.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Russian and Ukrainian Leaders Confirm the Gas Deal
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Wednesday. The Ukrainian leader said after the talks that his country would not violate “a single letter” of the gas agreement with Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Astana, after the swear-in ceremony of the newly elected Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev. These days Astana welcomed high-ranking delegations from neighboring countries, including Russia and Ukraine whose leaders and top energy officials met in the Kazakh capital to confirm their adherence to the new gas deal.
Russia and Ukraine made “difficult but mutually beneficial decisions”, as Russian President Putin underscored. Ukrainian President said that the two countries had gone “one of the toughest paths” over the last two months and congratulated his counterpart on the accords that were signed. The Russian president would not comment on the recent anti-governmental vote at the Ukrainian parliament but his Ukrainian counterpart said that the gas crisis was just a pretext for the decision of the Supreme Rada’s to sack the government.
Russian President Putin called the gas agreement “a shared choice of the two nations in favor of new relations”. “We are happy to state that we are finally dealing with the people in Kiev who know their minds and business,” Putin lauded Yushchenko’s team. Viktor Yushchenko, in this turn, ruled out any review of the deal. “I am ready to confirm each article of this agreement,” he declared.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 12, 2006
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