WORLD BRIEFING / RUSSIA
Russia’s state gas monopoly said it would cut off all natural gas supplies to Ukraine today after the two sides failed to agree on how much Ukraine would pay in 2009.
The cutoff announced by Gazprom’s chief executive, Alexei Miller, threatened a replay of a January 2006 faceoff, when a halt in Russian gas shipments to Ukraine resulted in a brief reduction of supplies to Europe.
As Ukraine made a late-hour appeal for a return to negotiations, Miller said Gazprom would continue full shipments to the European Union, which gets about a quarter of its gas from the Russian company, most of it through pipelines that cross Ukraine.
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