KYIV. Nov 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Ukraine is prepared to offer Russia military equipment worth over $1 billion in exchange for additional gas shipments, said Ukrainian national oil and gas provider Naftogaz Ukraine's chief Oleksiy Ivchenko.
The Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries, on the one hand, and Naftogaz Ukraine and Gazprom, on the other, have been negotiating a new deal in the past three months aiming to exchange Ukrainian weapons and military hardware for Russian gas, Ivchenko said.
Ivchenko did not elaborate on the military hardware Ukraine could offer Russia.
"This is an absolutely new project, it has no relation to current gas deliveries," Ivchenko told journalists in Kyiv on November 26 after he was asked by Interfax about prospects in Ukrainian-Russian relations in the gas sector.
"This is a new project we started at the level of cabinet ministers and Naftogaz Ukraine. We have set up a task force, and it is currently pursuing this project. It involves weapons that are produced in Ukraine but are not actually needed. But Russia needs them," he said.
According to Ivchenko, the two countries are currently coordinating the assortment of military hardware Ukraine could barter. "We are compiling a list with the Russian Defense Ministry, and we will deliver these weapons and hardware to the Russian Defense Ministry in exchange for gas," he said.
The project will be launched in 2006 and will be worth $1-1.5 billion, Ivchenko said.
Meanwhile, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told Interfax in comments on Ivchenko's statements, "We thought the times of barter were gone in both Russia and Ukraine. We deal in gas, not weapons, and we need money for gas deliveries. If Ukraine has good weapons, it should find a buyer and sell them and then pay money for gas, as is done all over the world."
Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov earlier reported that Ukrainian natural gas resources for 2005 amounted to 99.7 billion cubic meters, including 20.4 billion cubic meters Ukraine will produce itself, 24.5 billion cubic meters it will receive from Gazprom as transit payment and 37.3 billion cubic meters it will import from Central Asian republics.