Yushchenko against Northern and Southern Streams

President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine says that Europe does not need the natural gas pipelines Northern Stream and Southern Stream, which are being promoted by Russia. The Ukrainian President thinks that the projects lobbied for by Russia have a political background and USD 12-15 billion would be needed to realise them. He suggests it would be better to modernise and improve the management of existing systems.

Ukraine itself is lobbying for a new transit route which will pump central Asian natural gas into Europe through Georgia, the Black Sea and Ukraine, bypassing Russia. This is the White Stream project which was recently presented to Brussels by Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko.