The head of Russian gas giant Gazprom said on Friday that Ukraine had cut back on purchases of Russian gas since the middle of the month and appeared to be facing serious cash problems.
“Ukraine is experiencing serious problems with payment,” Alexei Miller said on Russia’s Vesti channel in comments carried by the Ria-Novosti news agency.
Ukraine has until Jan. 11 to pay for gas, according to Gazprom, which has repeatedly cut off supplies to the country over unpaid bills in the past.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“We are hearing and seeing that Ukraine is experiencing very, very serious problems in paying for supplies of Russian gas for December,” Miller said.
“We estimate the situation with the payment for the December supplies of the Russian gas as very serious,” Miller added.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told reporters Ukraine would find it hard to cover its next gas bill after the IMF turned down its request for a new loan tranche of US$3.8 billion.
Asked what would happen if Ukraine failed to meet the Jan. 11 deadline, Kupriyanov said Gazprom would act “in accordance with the contract,” a phrase the company has used in the past when turning off supplies.
In January, a pricing dispute between the two countries resulted in Russian gas being cut to much of Europe for two weeks as winter temperatures plunged.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Russia will cut gas supplies to Ukraine again if the struggling ex-Soviet nation fails to pay for its energy supplies.
Last month, Putin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko vowed at a meeting in the Ukrainian resort town of Yalta that there would be no repeat of the gas crisis next year.
Ukraine has been hard hit by the global economic crisis, which triggered a massive slump in its export-dependent heavy industrial sector.
The IMF extended US$16.4 billion credit in November last year to help Ukraine weather the downturn, by far the country’s biggest source of foreign income this year.
So far the government has received a total of US$10.6 billion, but the IMF is withholding the next tranche of US$3.8 billion because of concerns over political infighting in the run-up to the presidential election.
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