Ukraine wants the EU to help it organize a loan of 4.2 billion dollars in order to buy natural gas from Russia which would be consumed in Europe, dpa quoted a top official as saying today. "We are asking for assistance to make a loan from international monetary organizations and financial organizations, to have a credit of 4.2 billion dollars," Igor Didenko, deputy head of Ukraine's gas monopoly Naftogaz, said after a meeting with EU officials. "We are asking the representatives of EU countries to bring the idea to the heads of the EU member states" at a summit in Brussels on Thursday evening, he said. The ideal solution would be the signature of a credit agreement to allow Ukraine to buy Russian gas, which it would store and sell on to European customers in the winter. "We are very full of expectation that maybe tonight at the dinner or in the next one to two weeks this question would have a decision in principle," Didenko said. In January, a dispute between Ukraine and Russia's gas monopoly, Gazprom, cut off gas supplies to a swathe of EU states in Central and Eastern Europe. Last week, the Czech government, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, and the commission, the EU's executive, sent a team of experts to Russia and Ukraine amidst fears that Ukraine might be unable to pay Gazprom for gas which it would store during the summer and then sell on to EU customers in the winter. Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso will brief EU leaders on the report at Thursday's summit, commission energy spokesman Ferran Tarradellas said. But ahead of the summit, top officials said that the experts had concluded that Ukraine would be unable to pay for EU-bound gas in July - with serious effects for the EU's consumers. "Of course it's an issue again. It's not very clear what the reasons are, whether it's just that the Ukrainian government has no money or whether it is some kind of new strategy from (Russian) prime minister (Vladimir) Putin," Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius told the German Press Agency dpa. However, the summit was unlikely to propose concrete solutions, Kubilius said. "The EU has no such funds to step in. Perhaps European gas infrastructure companies will have to have some kind of arrangement, but that is up to the companies," he said.
