By Vestnik Kavkaza
After the Milan summit ASEM which discussed the Ukrainian problem, the European Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger suggested establishing a mediator for purchasing gas by Ukraine: “If Naftogaz cannot pay, a European company could pay for gas and later sell it to Naftogaz. Moreover, payments for Russian gas transit could be used for paying for gas.” However, the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, rejects the option: “All the gas which is transited to Europe is exported, according to the contract that says that gas custody transfers are situated outside Ukraine. As for the needs of Ukraine, we have an acting contract, and we will work within it. The question on purchasing Russian gas by a European company at the Russian-Ukrainian border won’t be discussed.”
Summing up the results of the Milan summit, Alexei Fenenko, a leading scientist of the Institute of International Security Problems of the RAS, called them a “frosting” of the conflict in Ukraine: “The Ukrainian authorities have realized that continuation of the military operation in Donbass will lead to a new military defeat, and in this case Ukraine would lose the Armed Forces finally. The militants are in the same situation – there was a successful attack in late August, but then it turned out they had no forces to capture Mariupol. The same applies to Russia. In April they openly discussed the possibility of establishing Novorossia from Odessa to Kharkov, but the project was supported only by Donbass. The EU and NATO countries also understand that it will be unrealistic to solve the conflict by military means. So there is a question on searching for a deal.”
Fenenko thinks that the Milan summit showed two forms of future possible dialogue. The first option is revival of a contact group. It was discussed in the Berlin memorandum of July 2nd – Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany. “There is a party in the American elite, which hopes for French-German mediation, hopes that the French and the Germans could develop an acceptable decision which would be more favorable for the Americans and less favorable for Russia,” the expert says.
The second variant, according to him, is a rise of the OSCE: “In the last 10 years everybody has discussed that the OSCE is dead. But when it came to action, it turned out that there are no alternatives to the OSCE. Neither the Russia-NATO Council nor the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative could develop a form of peace settlement.”
As for further talks, Fenenko doesn’t exclude a Russia-NATO format: “Next year, when the dust settles and the conflict is frozen, we could witness talks on reconsideration of the basic act of Russia-NATO. The Americans would demand from us to agree on deployment of their military structures in the Baltic and Black Sea regions; while Russia would resist them for sure. Within the talks on reforms of the basic act of Russia-NATO, Ukraine could be tried to be involved in it; for example, starting talks on deployment of military forces. It is not a fantastic scenario. I remind you that in the 1990s after the Istanbul summit of the OSCE, there were talks on Transdniestria within revision of the CFE Treaty. If there is an attempt to connect the Ukrainian situation with the basic act of Russia-NATO, there could be a mechanism of talks between Russia and the U.S.”
