Putin threatens to cut gas

RUSSIAN SPY HELD IN KIEV

Donetsk, April 10: Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened on Thursday to cut off Ukraine’s gas unless Europe drummed up the cash to help cover its debts in an intensifying standoff over the splintered exSoviet state.

The veteran strongman’s most direct warning about deliveries on which European nations also depend came with Ukraine facing a secession crisis and relations between Moscow and the West plumbing new postCold War lows.

The latest sign of the Kremlin's growing isolation came with a decision by the Council of Europe's human rights body to strip Russian lawmakers of their voting rights through the end of the year over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.

Ukraine’s embattled leaders meanwhile tried to keep what was left of

The Russian President dispatched a note to EU leaders warning that his energy-rich country was tired of accruing debts from a Western-backed leadership in Kiev whose legitimacy it did not recognise in the first place. The letter was distributed by Kremlin.

their nation of 46 million people whole by vowing to amnesty proRussian separatists occupying eastern state buildings if they laid down their arms and halted a four-day seige.

The militants’ demand to join Russia has added extra urgency to the first round of direct talks that EU and US diplomats have managed to convince both Moscow and Kiev to attend, set for April 17 in either Geneva or Vienna.

But Mr Putin did not appear to be in a concil- iatory mood as he dispatched a note to EU leaders warning that his energy-rich country was tired of accruing debts from a Western-backed leadership in Kiev whose legitimacy it did not recognise in the first place. A copy of the let- ter distributed by the Kremlin showed Mr Putin warning that Russia’s state gas firm Gazprom would be “compelled to switch over to advance payment for gas deliveries, and for further violation gas supply would be cut. — AFP