Groysman forbids Ukrainian ministers from talking to Russia without consent of Foreign Ministry
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has forbidden members of the Cabinet of Ministers from conducting any negotiations with Russia without the consent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
During a government meeting on Wednesday, he asked the Minister of Energy Ihor Nasalyk about a letter to Rosatom, which appeared in the media the day before.
The minister replied that the information that was in Ukrayinska Pravda was “fake.”
“The Ministry is not resuming cooperation [to build a nuclear plant] but completing cooperation. All information is available on the website of the Ministry of Energy and Coal,” Nasalyk said.
Groysman then said that government members should respond more quickly when fake stories appear in the media.
“Secondly, none of you is authorized to conduct talks with the country that is an aggressor and our enemy. We did not attack them, they attacked us. They will regret this for a very long time. All of these things must be coordinated through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and done within the framework of directives and mandates that are provided by the government,” he said.
Nasalyk then said that the letter to Rosatom was sent through the Foreign Ministry, not directly.
On Tuesday, July 10, Ukrayinskaya Pravda published the letter, signed by Ihor Nasalyk, and addressed to Kirill Komarov, first deputy general director of Rosatom ( Russian State Nuclear Energy Corporation). The letter discussed the need to resume construction of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine in cooperation with the Russian company TVEL.
The Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine said that the letter is a fake. On the Ministry of Economic Development’s website there is another letter to Rosatom, in which negotiations with TVEL are proposed. According to the ministry, the letter should not have been about resuming cooperation, but about a three-sided discussion concerning the purchase of a Russian stake in a project by the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation.