As many of the national and Russian media have already stressed, there are many reasons to believe that as soon as he is released, Lazarenko will join Moroz in presenting a growing number of complaints against the president. On Thursday the prime ministers of Ukraine and Russia signed a so-called gas memorandum. The major task now is to prepare corresponding projects of the intergovernmental agreements. These agreements will define conditions of debt liquidation, gas supply and transition. Preliminary negotiations and agreements on these topics were reached two weeks ago in Miensk during the official meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States leaders.
Conditions are indeed very favorable for Ukraine.
According to these, the country is not only allowed to take an additional two billion cubes of gas as interest-free technical credit and five additional billion cubes as credit from the insurance fund in case of the natural disaster, but also payment of Ukrainian debts is postponed for ten years. The budget for next year will be deficit-free. Two factions of the Parliament the Communists and Yabluko voted against the adoption of the budget. The Socialists mainly voted either against the budget or abstained from voting. Prime Minister Victor Yushchenko thanked deputies for their support and adoption of the budget.