Ukraine has the right to take 15 percent of Russian gas shipments to Europe that pass through its territory as a transit fee, Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov said Tuesday.

In comments released by his office, Yekhanurov said that Ukrainian companies "have the legal right to take 150 cubic meters of gas from every 1,000 as a transit fee."

The prime minister said that this was allowed under a contract with Russian gas provider Gazprom. "This is our unquestionable right, the legal right of Ukraine," Yekhanurov said.

His statement marked the latest escalation in an increasingly bitter gas feud between Ukraine and Russia. Russia is seeking to more than quadruple the price it charges Ukraine for natural gas and has warned it will turn off the taps on January 1 if Kiev refuses.

About 80 percent of Gazprom's European exports pass through Ukraine, and Gazprom's deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev on Friday warned Ukraine against siphoning the gas intended for the company's European customers.

State-controlled Gazprom, which supplies about half of the European Union's gas, held an exercise Friday in which CEO Alexei Miller practiced ordering a shutdown to Ukraine.

Ukraine has said it wants the price increase phased in over five years, saying such a huge jump in prices would cripple its industries and imperil the struggling country's economic development.

Gazprom officials insisted that the price hike for Ukraine, and significantly lesser increases for other ex-Soviet nations, mark a financially justified break with Russia's Soviet past and transfer to free-market price mechanisms. But many Ukrainians see the move as punishment for Kiev's pro-Western course.

Relations between Moscow and Kiev have been cold over the past year, since the election of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who aims to move Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence and closer to the West.
 
(Chinadaily.com via agencies December 28, 2005)