Moscow offers to sell Kyiv stolen coal as nuclear shutdown adds to Ukraine’s energy woes

Plant operators stressed that
the incident was not dangerous and had not
led to an increase in radiation, but with the country fast running out of fuel
for its conventional power plants, problems with its largest nuclear station will
be particularly unwelcome.

The Zaporizhia plant provides more than 22 percent of Ukraine’s
electricity supply, already disrupted by the conflict in the country’s east. On Dec. 5 Energy
Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn warned
that the nation’s power plants had less than one month’s worth of coal left, forcing
them to work at reduced capacity.

Coal mines in the self-proclaimed separatist republics in the
Donbas typically provide the bulk of the fuel for fossil fuel power plants, but
no longer serve the rest of the country.

Instead, Kremlin-backed insurgents are transporting large
quantities of coal from Ukraine to Russia, which has now offered to sell the
coal back to Kyiv. On a number of occasions OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine have
observed “high numbers of dumper
trucks transporting coal from the Luhansk region to the Russian Federation.”

The observation was followed shortly afterwards by Moscow’s
announcement that it would prove Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “goodwill” towards Ukraine
by selling the administration in Kyiv coal without prepayment.

“Against all the odds as President
Putin said earlier in the hard times he had never given up the consistent
policy towards supporting the Ukrainian people and providing real and not
eventual support,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Dec. 27.

“Due to the critical energy
situation Putin took a decision on such supplies regardless the absence of
prepayment, which is the condition of making them.” 

Mines in the Donbas produced 14.4 million tones of coal in
2014, according to
Interfax Ukraine news agency, and 680,000 tons between Dec. 1 and 18,
roughly double the amount Russia is now offering to sell to Ukraine.

Moscow is willing to sell 500,000 tons of coal to Ukraine
per month, according to Russian Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak.

“If an additional
corresponding agreement may be reached, we’re ready to supply another 500,000
tons, totally 1 million tons of coal, to Ukraine in order to help it solve
energy problems,” he told Rossiya24 TV channel.

Russia’s interest in Ukraine’s energy problems comes after a
week in which Ukraine twice shut down energy supplies to Russian occupied
Crimea, accusing the peninsula of exceeding its agreed usage limits.