?It is not acceptable for the gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine to turn millions of Europeans into hostages. This is a joint, consolidated position of the EU, which I presented to my colleagues during all of my high-level meetings in Moscow and Kiev,¯ Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said on January 15 at a special press conference, just hours after the end of his one-day working visit to Russia and Ukraine.

"The visit was part of the systematic and very energetic activities of the Bulgarian state in cooperation with our European partners, the Czech Presidency of the European Union and the European Commission towards the resolution of the unprecedented gas crisis in Europe," added Stanishev. He said he believes that the loss of trust is the main damage Russia and Ukraine are suffering as a result of their inability to solve their conflicts, which are not only commercial and economic, but are already gaining a visible political shade. According to Stanishev, losing the EU`s trust is a much graver problem than the losses suffered by Gazprom, which amounted to USD 800 million, according to data from the Russian company.

Stanishev said that he had already received a letter from his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Timoshenko which she had promised to send to their meeting in Kiev the day before. In it Timoshenko declared that if the Russian country provided the amounts of gas needed for the Valuevka and Pisarevka stations, to the south of the major transit point Sudzha, Ukraine will guarantee that the fuel will leave the Orlovka station from where the natural gas reaches Bulgaria and the region.

Ukraine committed to providing the same quantities of the fuel excluding the eight percent of the so-called technical gas. A copy of the letter which Timoshenko sent to the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also arrived in Sofia. She appealed to him to order Gazprom to renew gas supplies for Ukraine, for the respective stations and in the amounts envisaged for transit with the additional eight percent needed for the technological maintenance of the units that provide the necessary pressure in the pipelines. In this way Ukraine`s government will be able to secure the transit of contracted amounts of natural gas to the European consumers at the respective stations.

"The Ukrainian authorities also provided guarantees for payments for the technological gas immediately after a price had been agreed upon for the Ukrainian consumers," Stanishev told the media. He said that he had informed the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, with whom they were in constant contact by phone, of the course of his talks in Moscow and Kiev. "Our joint position is that the political pressure by the whole of the EU on Russia and Ukraine should continue, so that the two countries will meet their commitments and implement the protocol signed in Brussels," Stanishev pointed out.