Russian Federation halting gas supplies to Ukraine

There has been no request for gas deliveries from Ukraine’s Naftogaz.

“Supplies are being stopped until new payments arrive from the Ukrainian company”, said Alexei Miller, the Gazprom chief.

The Ukrainian military said another soldier was killed in a new bout of clashes across the shattered war zone in the past 24 hours.

Ukraine has banned all Russian planes from using its airspace and exports of Russian gas to Ukraine have been halted by state-controlled giant Gazprom, BBC reported.

The Russia-Ukraine gas supply dilemma could see a new development as the countries continue political and commercial retaliation, Kallanish Energy learns.

The two sides have been locked in disputes over gas supplies, pricing and debts, while the European Union (EU) played as mediator to avoid possible outage of its gas supplies from the east. As the nations fell out over the conflict in Syria, Moscow-based Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, said last month it would cut the capacity of the planned link to Turkey and on to Europe by 50 percent.

“As of 10:00 this morning, Ukraine’s Naftogaz chose its earlier prepayment volume of Russian gas”.

“The Ukrainian government has made a decision to ban all transit flights for all Russian airlines in Ukraine’s airspace”, he told a televised government meeting in Kiev.

“For the a year ago and a half, we have shown that we can ensure the uninterrupted transit of Russian gas regardless of whether it comes to us or not and whether it’s in the summer or winter season”.

“The bottom line is militarily, strategically they may want to draw a line and say this has gone too far, but it wouldn’t be wise”, said De Jong.

Tensions have heightened over the disputed Crimean Peninsula, which Russian Federation annexed in March 2014 but which still depends on Ukraine for much of its key infrastructure. The demand from pro-Russian rebels to secede from Ukraine has also worsened the relations between Kiev and Moscow. The press service of the Federal Customs Service said that “it had no information on the issue”, while JSC Russian Railways assured that there were no restrictions on supplies to Ukraine.