Yatsenyuk claimed that if the project to send gas via Nord Stream 2 rather than across his own country went ahead it would cost his country $2 billion a year in lost revenues.
In June Russia's Gazprom, Anglo-Dutch Shell, Germany's E.ON and Austria's OMV signed up to the pipeline, which would run alongside the existing nord Stream pipeline but would greatly increase the capacity Russia could send to Germany while bypassing Ukraine, Poland and Slovakia.
“Let me express my deepest concerns over the idea to build Nord Stream 2. The fact is that if Russia and some Western companies will accomplish Nord Stream 2 this will deprive Ukraine of two billion dollars in revenue. This will deprive Slovakia of 0.8 billion dollars in revenues, Poland 0.3 billion dollars in revenues and this will even deprive the EU of real energy independence,” Yatsenyuk said.
“So we ask the European Commission... to seriously get into this issue so Russia is not allowed to facilitate a bottleneck and control the energy market of the European Union.”
“This project has nothing based on economic issues it's more of a political one,” he said.
Yatsenyuk's concerns were echoed by his Baltic colleagues, who also reiterated calls for Russia to comply with the Minsk peace agreements agreed to de-escalate conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Yatsenyuk described Ukraine's own position on compliance as "whiter than white."
Estonia's Taavi Roivas called on European consumers to buy more Ukrainian goods to help counter Russian economic sanctions.
