President Victor Yushchenko sent letters to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and to the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso expressing worries about the situation with transit of Russian gas through the territory of Ukraine.

President said that Ukraine continues to do everything to provide transit of Russian gas to European consumers, even using its own gas out of underground storages for that. He also emphasized that from January 1, 2009 Ukraine stopped using gas pumped to its territory from Russia for internal consumption, and was utilizing only previously stored and paid for or domestically extracted gas.

Addressing President Medvedev, President Yushchenko said that the situation in Europe becomes further more complicated and dangerous and called upon Russian leader to make steps in order to renew full-scale transit of gas to European consumers before completion of talks between Ukraine and Russia on conditions of gas supplies and transit in 2009.

"Ukraine affirms its readiness to provide transit of Russian natural gas and wait for payment by OJSC ‘Gazprom’ for it until the end of the talks", - said Victor Yushchenko.

Beside that he suggested beginning immediate talks on the level of gas transporting organizations on transparent and predictable procedure of supplying European customers with Russian gas.

In the letter to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, President Victor Yushchenko called upon the European Union to use its all abilities to persuade President Medvedev to begin talks immediately. He also suggested "assigning observers from the European Commission to receiving point of Russian gas for transit through Ukrainian territory and to control point of OJSC ‘Ukrtransgaz’" for them to provide true real-time information from these points.

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