Biography | Yulia Tymoshenko — The Moscow Gas Talks That Ended an Eighteen-Day Crisis

On January 19, 2009, Yulia Tymoshenko joined Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the House of the Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow after negotiations intended to end a gas crisis affecting Ukraine and much of Europe. Russia had stopped supplying gas to Ukraine at the start of January after the two countries failed to agree on prices and debts. On January 7, the disruption expanded to transit shipments crossing Ukraine toward European customers, leaving several countries short of fuel during winter. Tymoshenko traveled to Moscow as Ukraine’s prime minister and negotiated directly with Putin after an earlier multinational summit failed to resolve the dispute. Their agreement moved the two countries toward a European price formula, gave Ukraine a temporary discount for 2009, and kept the existing transit tariff for that year. It also removed intermediary companies from the supply arrangement and established long-term contracts for gas sales and transit. The commercial documents were signed by the heads of Gazprom and Naftogaz in the two prime ministers’ presence. They were designed to cover ten years. Shipments resumed after the signing, ending an interruption that had damaged the reputation of both countries as participants in Europe’s energy system. The settlement was politically costly inside Ukraine. President Viktor Yushchenko criticized its base price and transit terms, while Tymoshenko defended the negotiated formula as a workable compromise. Two years later, a Ukrainian court used her handling of the agreement as the basis for an abuse-of-office conviction and a seven-year prison sentence. European governments and the United States widely criticized that prosecution as politically motivated, making the Moscow agreement central not only to Tymoshenko’s record in government but also to the next phase of her political life. The attached photograph was made during the joint statement that followed the negotiations on January 19 and shows Tymoshenko with Putin at the event. The pin marks the Russian government building where the meeting was documented, without identifying a room, entrance, security route, or restricted interior point. At this public institution, an emergency energy negotiation became one of the most consequential and contested decisions of Tymoshenko’s premiership. Photo: premier.gov.ru, CC BY 4.0 and CC BY 3.0; photographed January 19, 2009.