President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky calls on businessmen and politicians who left the country to return to Ukraine within the next 24 hours, as this is “an important moment of the country’s unity.”
“I would focus on our management, on our country, on the people who today, some of them, are abroad, members of some parties, I don’t even want to say their names, you all understand what kind of people they are. It seems to me that this is a serious challenge. I think we should give them a signal – a fair one. First of all, from the Verkhovna Rada, from the speaker, from the state, and on my own behalf I would like to ask them to bring some of their relatives within 24 hours, to return to the country after all,” Zelensky said at a joint briefing with the German chancellor in Kyiv on Monday.
He stressed that this is an important moment, “the moment of the country’s unity.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will visit Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 to hold a High-Level Strategic Council, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.
“In the Strategy [ of foreign policy], we also determined that the priority in the development of strategic partnership with Turkey will continue to be the support of political dialogue at the level of heads of state, as well as the development of Quadriga. At the beginning of the year, Turkish President Erdoğan will visit Ukraine for holding the High-Level Strategic Council, and this will be the next step in the development of our relations,” Kuleba said at the event “Diplomacy 2022: Priorities of the Foreign Policy Strategy” in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s proposal to the European Union on additional transit in the amount of 55 billion cubic meters of gas under special conditions is good, and can be implemented if Russia can extract more gas and wants to supply more, since Nord Stream 2 will not work for six months for sure, German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen has said. “It was a good offer from Ukraine. If you look closely, it is only about additional gas volumes. It is not as easy as we think, because gas is located in Russia, not in Ukraine, the gas transmission point is on your eastern border. The proposal is interesting, because Nord Stream 2 will not work for six months for sure. If Russia can produce more gas and wants to supply more, if they have a commercial interest and they can physically do it, this is a good proposal, and I can imagine that it will be implemented,” Feldhusen said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.At the same time, the ambassador said that the German federal regulator postponed the certification of Nord Stream 2 as an independent gas transmission operator, as it realized that first it needed to do unbundling, and without it the operator should not work further.“This institution – Bundesnetzagentur – operates exclusively according to German and European laws. They saw that they needed to do unbundling first. I think they realized that without this they should not work further,” she said.Feldhusen said that this was not a step on the part of Germany in response to Russia’s blackmail.“No, not at all. We all think that Russia has an interest in getting certification faster, not later. However, now it will definitely not be faster. If there are no conditions for certification, then it will not be. Russia knows about this. The fact that we have a problem with the supply of energy now is another challenge, we are all working on this, not only Germany, but other countries as well. But I think that the fact that Bundesnetzagentur stopped certification has nothing to do with this crisis,” she said.According to her, the first reason for high gas prices is the fact that there is little gas on the European market.“The Netherlands, Norway are supplying less gas. We knew about this. The bad surprise was that liquefied gas goes entirely to Asia, because there are higher prices. That is, this is a commercial decision. Russia supplies gas so far under contracts. If we look at the annual or monthly volumes, they supplied even more in November than before. We are watching this very closely, but so far these natural reasons are more influencing the price of gas,” the diplomat added.Feldhusen assured that if Russia uses gas as a weapon, Germany will take appropriate measures.“We are closely monitoring the situation, and if Russia uses gas as a weapon, we will take appropriate measures,” the ambassador said.
https://interfax.com.ua/
