Ukraine says it has paid its natural gas debt to Russia

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine’s president, facing a threatened cutoff of natural gas by Moscow next week, insisted Wednesday that his country has paid its debt, but Russia’s natural gas monopoly wasn’t satisfied.

Russia’s state-controlled OAO Gazprom says it will cut off exports of Russian-origin gas to Ukraine on Monday unless the government signs documents on debt payment and future deliveries. Those documents are to formalize an agreement that President Viktor Yushchenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached this month to avert another threatened cutoff.

Yushchenko said Ukraine has paid its debt and ”the tension in gas relations with Russia has been eased.”

But Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said Ukraine has only settled its debt for 2007 supplies.

”To pay what one owes for last year is not a heroic feat; there is nothing to be proud of,” Kupriyanov said.

Ukraine imports gas both from Central Asia and Russia, all of it arriving in Gazprom-controlled pipelines. Gazprom says about 25 percent of Ukraine’s gas imports are Russian-origin; that’s the portion Gazprom says it will cut off Monday if the documents aren’t signed.

AP