Gazprom confirms Kiev pays gas bill
(MOSCOW) - Gas export giant Gazprom said on Monday that Kiev had paid its gas bill for October, after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned of the risk of a new gas crisis over late payments.
Ukraine's state gas firm "Naftogaz has paid in full for October gas deliveries," a Gazprom spokesman told news agency RIA Novosti. Kiev said late last week that it had paid the bill of 500 million dollars (336 million euros).
The statement came with the European Union on alert against a repetition of last January's gas crisis, when a payment row between Kiev and Moscow caused a two-week cut off in supplies to a dozen European states.
Tensions mounted late last month when Putin warned that Ukraine again appeared to be struggling to pay for supplies and accused President Viktor Yushchenko of seeking to provoke a new gas crisis.
The daily Kommersant said on Monday that Moscow had handed Brussels a draft "memorandum on an energy early warning system", which it hopes will be signed at a Russia-EU summit in Stockholm on November 18.
The document, a copy of which was seen by the paper, proposes a plan for joint action in the cases of a disruption to deliveries due to transit states siphoning off gas intended for Europe, a charge Moscow leveled at Ukraine last year.
Europe -- which gets 25 percent of its gas from Russia of which 80 percent passes through Ukraine -- has expressed worry over signs of a new rift between Russia and its ex-Soviet neighbour.
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