OREANDA-NEWS  Kiev is negotiating the possibility of transporting Azerbaijani gas to Europe using its gas infrastructure. This was stated by the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Georgy Tikhy, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

At the same time, he stressed that it was not about the supply of Azerbaijani gas, but some other kind of gas under its guise. The official did not specify how this project could be implemented or how the work was progressing, adding only that Ukraine was seeing different signals from Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated that Kiev was ready to transport Azerbaijani gas through its territory, and he had already discussed this issue at a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at a meeting in Switzerland.

The transit of Russian gas through Ukraine stopped on January 1 due to the expiration of the relevant contract. Two EU countries, Hungary and Slovakia, threaten Kiev to block further European support if supplies do not recover, as they received significant amounts of gas under existing contracts.

Since February 1, Slovakia has been receiving Russian gas through the Turkish Stream pipeline, which was previously used for supplies to Hungary. However, the capacity of the branch line intended for the countries of Southern and Central Europe is finite, and it cannot fully compensate for the Ukrainian direction. Besides, supplies to Slovakia are more expensive.

The head of the Slovak operator of the SPP gas transmission system, Vojtech Ferenc, previously announced that he was working on creating a subsidiary company for gas transportation in Ukraine. Together with the confirmation from Ukraine, we can talk about a spot agreement between Moscow and Baku, under which gas already belonging to the Caucasian republic will flow to the border of Ukraine. Without Russia's participation, Azerbaijan cannot deliver its extracted gas to the border of Ukraine due to the lack of infrastructure.