President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered Gazprom to cut gas supplies to Belarus, the Kremlin's press office said on Monday, a move that is feared to have a drastic affect on supplies to Europe.
Gazprom's chief executive Alexei Miller said the supplies will be cut gradually, RIA-Novosti reported.
Gas supplies will be cut "day-by-day, proportionally to the debt's volume", the agency cited Miller as saying.
Russia has said it will cut 85 percent of gas supplies to transit country Belarus from 0600 GMT if its ex-Soviet neighbor fails to pay $192 million in debt to Gazprom.
Russia’s gas price disputes with its neighbors became a worry for Europe when its supplies were halted for almost two weeks in January 2009 while Moscow and Ukraine argued over prices and transit terms.
However, Gazprom has said it has the capacity to reroute the European gas supplies away from Belarus, and that the impact of the cuts would be less severe because of lower summertime needs.
On Sunday, Belarus sent a delegation to Moscow for emergency talks to resolve the price row.
Miller said on Monday that Belarus admits having the debt.
"But it proposes to pay it with machinery, equipment and a series of other products," Miller said, adding that the talks ended without resolution.
Gazprom said earlier this month that Belarus has been paying $150 per 1,000 cubic meters, instead of the $169.20 that Gazprom charged in the first quarter and $184.80 in the second.
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