Slovakia asks the EU to stop the South Stream project for the Ukraine's benefit.

The EU agreement on the construction of South Stream - a pipeline under the Black Sea from Russia bypassing the Ukraine - will mean that Brussels does not support the movement of Kiev to the West and considers the Ukraine an unreliable transit country, the head of the Slovak pipeline operator Eustream stated, Reuters writes.

Despite the fact that at the beginning of June one of the countries - participants of the South Stream project - Bulgaria stopped work on the construction of the pipeline prior to authorization of the European Commission, Gazprom is not expecting the postponement of the pipeline's launch and is going to bring the first gas by the end of 2015.

"This will greatly hurt the Ukraine. This will cause huge financial losses, destroy the value of its gas assets - the backbone of its economy, and severely undermine its ambitions to also buy gas in the West", - Tomas Maresek, the head of Eustream, stated.