MOSCOW — Russia started reducing the pressure in its natural-gas pipelines to Ukraine today after Kiev rejected Moscow's last-minute offer to briefly delay a crippling increase in prices. The move toward a cutoff raised the possibility that European gas supplies also could be interrupted within the next few weeks.
Gazprom officials said this morning that they would begin a partial shutdown in the gas lines on the Russia-Ukraine border, which delivers about 40% of Ukraine's gas and as much as 30% of Europe's.
The state-controlled energy giant made its move after Ukraine rejected an offer Saturday from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to hold off on a price increase on the heating fuel until April if Ukraine agreed to pay market prices after that date.
"Yesterday, we made an offer to the Ukrainian side. We were ready to compromise in order to provide comfortable conditions to Ukraine during the winter period. But we got a refusal," Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told reporters this morning.
"As a result, we're reducing pressure on the pipeline," he said.
Gazprom officials said a computerized delivery system would determine how to reduce the supply of gas to Ukraine while still ensuring full contract deliveries to Europe. Possibly, they said, they will cut the flow in the two pipelines that go most directly to Ukraine, while leaving uninterrupted three other Europe-bound pipelines, but that had not yet been determined.
Russian television this morning showed workers at a control room in the town of Sudzha, near the border, scrutinizing computer terminals that control the giant red, yellow and gray gas lines that run across the border.
In Ukraine, demands for a rate increase are widely seen as a response to the "Orange Revolution." The largely peaceful uprising a little more than a year ago toppled Ukraine's pro-Russian government and helped elect President Viktor Yushchenko, whose leanings are toward the market economics of the West.
"Russia's firm position that Ukraine should buy gas at European prices is certainly a reaction to the new political course Ukraine is pursuing now," Socialist Party parliament deputy Mikola Rudkovsky said in a telephone interview from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
On Saturday, Putin had been more conciliatory. "Ukraine is not an abstract bunch of senior officials, and not a lot of oil and gas barons looking out for their own interests, but above all it is the brotherly Ukrainian people, and we must think about all aspects of relations between Russia and Ukraine," he said Saturday afternoon at a meeting with his Security Council.
