Ukraine Offers to Consider Exporting Electricity to Lithuania

Aug 13, 2007 - Daily News Bulletin; Moscow - English

Ukraine is willing to consider exporting electricity to Lithuania, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on Monday.

Yushchenko, who was speaking at a meeting with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus in the Ukrainian autonomous region of Crimea, also said a planned energy summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on October 10-11 would be extremely important for Ukraine.

One reason is the proposals for "building up the East-West transportation corridor in order to diversify [energy] sources and routes for the transportation of Caspian energy to Europe," the Ukrainian presidential press service said.

Adamkus, at a news conference after the meeting, expressed hope that Ukraine would take part in building a new generating unit for Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power plant.

He argued that the unit would help build an electricity grid extending from Scandinavia westward and incorporating the Baltic countries, Poland and Ukraine.

He also credited Russia with being a leading electricity supplier for the whole of Europe and argued that, for this reason, Lithuania needed secure electricity supply arrangements with Russia.