Russia, Ukraine trade blame as Europe sees no gas

Russia and Ukraine hotly blamed each other Tuesday as Russia restarted natural gas supplies but little or no gas flowed toward Europe. EU officials criticized both nations for their intransigence and eastern European nations scrambled for a sixth day to find heat.

Russia’s state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom said it began pumping gas to Europe Tuesday after cutting off supplies Jan. 7 amid a pricing dispute with Ukraine.

But European Union officials said no gas was flowing and their monitors were not allowed full access to either nation’s gas control rooms, so outside experts could not figure out what was going on or who was to blame.

“The information that we have from our monitors in Russia is that little or no gas is currently flowing and we are not at this stage jumping to conclusions as to why this is the case,” said EU spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen. “This situation is obviously very serious and needs to improve rapidly.”

Amid freezing winter temperatures, a war of words erupted.

Russia’s state gas monopoly Gazprom claimed Ukraine was stealing the gas and taking orders from the United States in the crisis. Ukraine accused Russia of sending the gas on a nearly impossible journey from incompatible pipelines and of using the crisis to try to wrest control of Ukraine’s vast pipeline network.

In the meantime, several European nations were growing desperate. Bulgaria has lost all of its gas supplies and has only two days worth of reserves. Slovakia, which has lost 97 percent of its gas supplies, vowed Tuesday it was ready to restart an aging Soviet nuclear power plant despite EU objections.