Gas companies agree to resume shipments to Ukraine
The Russian and Ukrainian natural gas companies today agreed to resume gas shipments to Ukraine, but details of the deal were not known.
The heads of Gazprom and Naftogaz, Alexei Miller and Oleksiy Ivchenko, were scheduled to announce the results of talks, NTV and Channel One television stations reported.
Russia stopped selling natural gas to the neighbouring country of 48 million on Sunday after Ukraine rejected its demand for a more-than-four-fold price increase.
The dispute has raised anxiety throughout Europe, which gets about a quarter of its gas from Russia, some 80 per cent of that amount coming in pipelines that cross Ukraine.
European customers reported supply fall-offs on Monday, after which Russia boosted the amount going into Ukrainian pipelines; supplies in Europe appeared to be returning to normal yesterday.
