Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko pledged Monday to avoid a "gas war" with Russia although Russia has cut its natural gas supplies by one quarter.
"While addressing the gas talks, the president emphasized that the most important thing was to hold negotiations as dynamically as possible, with the purpose bringing them to a successful conclusion, and not to provoke in any case a gas war," the presidential press service said in a statement.
The press service added Yushchenko has made the remarks during a meeting with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Parliament Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Earlier, a spokesman for Ukraine's state company Naftogaz said Ukraine will not be affected although Russia has cut its natural gas supplies .
"Even if gas supplies are reduced by 25 percent, it will not be felt by consumers. Naftogaz will ... switch to gas supplies from its own reserves," the company's spokesman Valentyn Zemlyansky was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.
Russia's natural gas company Gazprom cut gas deliveries to Ukraine by 25 percent at 10 a.m. Moscow time (0700 GMT) Monday as it warned earlier, after talks on debt disputes between the two countries ended in failure.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said Ukraine had consumed without Russian authorization around 1.9 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas from the beginning of this year, worth some 600 million U.S. dollars.
The two sides failed in the last minute to sign a deal, under which they agreed that Ukraine would pay its debt for Russian gas deliveries and that a new delivery scheme would be worked out, Kupriyanov said.
Ukraine sits at the main transit route for Russia's gas exports to Europe, where a quarter of its gas needs is supplied by Russia.
Source:Xinhua
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