Kiev: Ukraine has announced the immediate suspension of all Russian gas purchases after EU-mediated negotiations aimed at keeping supplies running for at least three more months broke down.
The state energy company Naftogaz said it would still continue transporting Russian gas supplies westward to its other European client states.
"Since the additional agreement between Naftogaz and Gazprom is expiring on June 30, and the terms of further Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine were not agreed at today's trilateral talks in Vienna, Naftogaz is suspending purchases from the Russian company," the Ukrainian firm said in a statement yesterday.
"The shipment of gas across Ukraine for Gazprom's European clients will continue in full," the statement added.
The surprising decision marks the second time in less than a year that Russian fuel supplies have stopped running to its westward-leaning former Soviet neighbour.
Moscow dramatically hiked the price it charges Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 ouster of Kremlin-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych.
The European Union - mindful of the repeated price battles because Russia supplies its 28 member nations with about a third of their natural gas needs - has since been able to broker a series of agreements that need to renewed every three months.
Kiev is also increasingly relying on gas purchases from central European countries and energy-rich Norway.
Ukraine has actually received more gas via pipelines running through Slovakia than those coming from Russia in the first three weeks of June.
Gazprom has called such shipments illegal because they often involved gas that European states resold after initially receiving in quantities fixed by long-term contracts from the Russian energy behemoth.
Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak called Ukraine's decision "unfortunate".
"The Ukrainian side said it was not satisfied with the price discount being offered by the Russian Federation," Moscow's state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted Novak as saying in the Austrian capital.
Russia employs complex pricing formulas that vary from country to country and are loosely tied to the global price of oil.
