KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine would not be opposed if Qatar or any other country were to negotiate an agreement on energy security via separate talks with Ukraine and Russia, a top Ukrainian presidential official said in a televised interview released on Monday.
But Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, said there was no such agreement in place.
“We held thematic conferences – the first on energy security, co-organised by Qatar,” Yermak said.
“After that, we said that if Qatar or another country is ready to implement these agreements (reached at the conference) through deals with Ukraine separately and with Russia separately, please do so.”
Yermak did not specify which agreements might be in question, but said no agreement had been reached yet and that Kyiv was not negotiating directly with Moscow, which began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Ukrainian presidential office said in late August that about 40 countries had taken part in an online conference organised by Qatar and that the main topic was improving the security of the Ukrainian energy system against Russian strikes.
The online conference took place on Aug. 22, soon after Ukrainian forces entered Russia’s Kursk region in early August.
Since March, Russia has carried out about 10 big missile attacks on the Ukrainian energy system, causing Ukraine to lose almost half of its generating capacity.
“Protecting energy infrastructure facilities, their rapid restoration and development is the only way to prevent the deepening of the crisis,” Yermak said in August.
The Financial Times reported in October that Ukraine and Russia were in the early stages of negotiations about potentially halting airstrikes on each other’s energy facilities.
The talks, the sources told the FT, had been derailed by Kyiv’s forces launching an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that borders Ukraine.
The Kremlin and a Ukrainian energy source dismissed that report.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Alex Richardson and Timothy Heritage)
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