The European Commission is satisfied with the fulfilment of transit obligations on suppling Russian gas to Ukraine.
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On Wednesday Ukraine announced it was to stop buying gas from its giant neighbor and banned all Russian airlines from crossing its airspace, in the latest escalation between the two neighbors.
Russia briefly cut gas supplies to Ukraine in July and in June 2014 as Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces clashed, following the ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych.
A group of European companies in September signed an agreement with Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom to expand its Nord Stream pipeline to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.
Gazprom said it had halted gas deliveries to Ukraine because it had used up all the gas it had paid for.
After Moscow provides no more gas, the Government in Kiev has blocked completely the airspace for all airlines of the neighboring country.
“We’re not particularly concerned about the gas flows from Russian Federation to Ukraine at the moment”, European Commission energy spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told reporters in Brussels Wednesday.
Russia’s energy minister Alexander Novak said Kiev’s failure to restore power to Crimea, which Moscow annexed previous year, raised the possibility that coal supplies to Ukraine may be stopped, potentially starving its power stations of fuel.
“Supplies are being stopped until new payments arrive from the Ukrainian company”, said Alexei Miller, the Gazprom chief.
Ukraine has imported 400 mcm of Russian gas so far this month, including 10 mcm on Tuesday, Ukrtransgaz data showed. The energy row spilled over into regional politics, putting former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the cross-hairs for her role in breaking the 2009 impasse over bilateral contracts.
The blackouts – the result of pro-Ukrainian activists blowing up the electricity lines which supply Crimea in southern Ukraine over the weekend – are causing misery for the population of some 2 million and testing loyalty levels to Moscow.
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Temperatures in Ukraine, where most homes rely on gas for central heating, were below freezing on Wednesday morning.
