Russia agrees to resume natural gas flow to Ukraine: EU official

Russia has agreed to resume natural gas flow to Ukraine for the coming winter under a deal reached following months of tough negotiations brokered by the European Union, a top EU official says.

"We just initialed a trilateral agreement for the upcoming winter," European Commission Vice-President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic told a late Friday press conference after nearly six hours of talks with the Russian and Ukrainian energy ministers in the Belgian capital Brussels.

The agreement is a "crucial step" to guarantee that Kiev -- as well as other European destinations -- receives gas supplies from October through March, Sefcovic said.

He also added that Russia is committed to lower the price for Ukraine to the same "competitive level" given to neighboring countries, from $251 per 1,000 cubic meters to $232.

During the press conference, Ukraine’s Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn told reporters that "commercial conditions were acceptable."

"I'm sure we will … start pumping gas into storage shortly," he said, adding, "Ukraine confirmed in this document its capacity to ensure uninterrupted transit of Russian gas to EU partners."

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, for his part, stressed that Moscow “will spare no effort” to prevent any kind of problem.

Russia and Ukraine have experienced gas disputes over the past years. The dispute worsened after Russia remarkably increased the price of gas it supplied to Kiev when Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a pro-Western unrest in February 2014. His ouster was followed by heavy clashes between government forces and pro-Russia fighters in the eastern parts of Ukraine.

In February this year, Russia’s state-owned gas giant, Gazprom, threatened to cut off its supplies to Ukraine and divert them to the country’s eastern regions, which are controlled by pro-Russia forces.

Russia supplies around a third of Europe's natural gas, half of which flows through Ukraine.

The two mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine have been hit by deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations in April last year to crush pro-Russia forces there.

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