MOSCOW (Reuters):
RUSSIA WAS restoring full gas deliveries to European states yesterday, effectively easing a blockade on Ukraine, but the Kremlin row with its ex-Soviet neighbour which triggered the sanction was still bubbling.
European nations from Serbia to Germany complained of supply cuts and Washington warned Moscow against using energy as a political tool after Russia's gas monopoly cut its feed to Ukraine on Sunday over a pricing row.
Moscow bowed to Western pressure and agreed on Monday to restore pumping close to normal levels, acknowledging there was little it could do to stop Ukraine helping itself to gas that crosses its territory on the way west.
Russian state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom said supplies to customers in Europe had now been fully restored.
"We have fully completed work to restore gas supplies to Europe," Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told a news briefing. "At this time we are carrying out deliveries to European consumers in full."
But events in the past 36 hours sent a chill through capitals and energy markets.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy urged Kiev and Moscow to settle their dispute through talks and not allow it to spill over again onto European energy supplies.
"This has to be resolved in a calm atmosphere, without tension, and not turn into a political process ... (It) must not have any consequences for the European Union," he told LCI television.
Poland's Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz told public radio that diversifying gas supplies away from Russia was a priority.
There was no end in sight to Russia's row with Ukraine that brought to a new low relations already tetchy since Ukraine pulled away from Moscow's orbit by electing West-leaning President Viktor Yushchenko a year ago.
Gazprom said it had not lifted its embargo on gas shipments to Ukraine and repeated its claim that Kiev was siphoning off gas intended for piping onward to customers in the EU.
"Ukraine continues to steal gas, and has stolen 118 million cubic metres over the past day. Gazprom will once again compensate its European consumers but it cannot continue eternally and Ukraine will have to pay for it," Kupriyanov said.
Kiev has denied taking Russian gas but said it would do so if temperatures fell below freezing. It says it is currently using gas from another ex-Soviet state, Turkmenistan.
There was no indication of any talks to resolve an increasingly bitter standoff between two countries.
The Kremlin has made no secret of its discomfort with the West-leaning stand of the Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko who rose to power a year ago after mass protests forced a rerun of an election initially won by a Moscow-backed candidate.
RUSSIA SAYS DISPUTE IS COMMERCIAL
Gazprom cut supplies to Ukraine after Kiev rejected demands it pay four times more for its gas - a sharp break with subsidised prices rooted in Soviet times.
Russia said the rise simply brought prices in line with market rates while Ukrainian officials argued the Kremlin was using the issue to undermine the Kiev government ahead of parilamentary elections in March.
Europe receives a quarter of its gas from Russia. Since Soviet times Moscow has promoted itself as a reliable supplier - an image it seeks to enhance as current chairman of the G8 group of industrial nations.
Gazprom said it would pipe an extra 95 million cubic metres of gas a day to Europe via Ukraine and planned to restore full supplies to European customers - but not to Ukraine - by Tuesday evening.
On Sunday, it cut volumes going along that route by 120 million cubic metres a day, the amount Ukraine had been buying.
Analysts said there was little EU nations could do for now to lessen their dependence on Russian energy because there were no readily available alternatives.
But Germany, Russia's biggest gas customer, said it would think twice about increasing its imports of Russian gas unless Moscow proved it was a dependable energy supplier.
