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                  Ukraine Details Interim Gas Deal with Russia

   by VOA News

   Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says a preliminary energy deal
   reached with Russia will require Kyiv to pay $385 per cubic meter of
   natural gas through the winter months.

   Poroshenko disclosed details of the deal to Ukraine media on Saturday.
   The rate is nearly $100 less than Moscow was charging Ukraine in June,
   when it stopped all deliveries to its neighbor.

   However, the Ukraine leader said the agreement -- ratified Friday at a
   Russia-Europe summit -- is only in place until March 31, 2015. He also
   said his cash-strapped government may need international help to pay
   its gas bills.

   Gas-rich Russia and energy-dependent Ukraine have been embroiled in an
   energy dispute since April, when Moscow nearly doubled the price of gas
   to Ukraine to $480 per cubic meter. That hike came just weeks after
   massive pro-Western demonstrations in Kyiv forced Russian-leaning
   president Viktor Yanukovych from office, in what Moscow has since
   called an anti-constitutional coup d'etat.

   Russian energy negotiators later offered about a 20 percent price cut.

   But that bid was rejected by Kyiv, which argued for a deeper discount
   closer to prices in effect before the bilateral political crisis
   sparked an ongoing rebellion by pro-Russian separatists near the
   Russian border.

   Some information for this report comes from AP, AFP and Reuters.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraine-russia-temprary-gas-deal/2488
   469.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraine-russia-temprary-gas-deal/2488469.html