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Eastern Europe
March 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
so Naftogaz is likely to restart limited imports of Russian gas later this year.
In 2017, Ukraine increased imports of natural gas by 26.8% or 2.972bn cubic meters (bcm) to 14.05 bcm. Imports from Slovakia in 2017 amounted to 9.91 bcm, Hungary to 2.835 bcm, and Poland to 1.305 bcm.
Ukraine aims to be self-sufficient in natural gas by 2022, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said on January 22.
Ukraine's 'Untouchables' are battered but unbowed
The transit contract for Russian gas sent through Ukraine to customers in Western Europe between Naftogaz and Gazprom remains in effect and is covered by the existing deal for the period 2009- 2019. According to the agreement, Gazprom must annually ship at least 110 billion cubic meters of gas via Ukraine to western Europe. Gazprom is hoping to reduce the volume of its gas transiting Ukriane once an extention to its Nord Stream pipeline running through the Baltic Sea comes online next year.
Fabrice Deprez in Kyiv
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau is on the frontline of the country’s fight against corruption, but its offices are in a quiet suburb of Kyiv well away from the rest of the imposing government buildings in the centre.
That’s probably a good thing, as NABU is not well liked by the other branches of government. Seen by some as the modern day equivalent of the US federal “Untouchables,” NABU in reality seems to spend more time fighting off attacks by Ukraine’s government than it does catching bent officials who are lining their pockets.
The agency was more or less explicitly forced on President Petro Poroshenko's administration by Ukraine’s international donors, by being made a rider in the deal on the country’s $17.5bn standby
Artem Sytnyk, director of Ukraine's NABU.
programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and hundreds of millions more from the likes of the European Union (EU) and others.
NABU has been frustrated by the government’s increasingly transparent efforts to block its work. Corruption is the bane of transitional countries, but without strong and independent institutions most of the leaders of these countries use corruption as the easiest and most effective
way to wield political power. In most countries, including Ukraine, corruption is the system.
The point was highlighted yet again by the
latest Transparency International Corruption Perspectives index, released at the end of February, which showed that Russia and Ukraine are the two most corrupt countries in Europe and Kyiv despite Ukraine's attempt to “turn to