Gazprom: Ukraine gas supplies to be cut off

? Russia’s state gas monopoly said it would cut off all natural gas supplies to Ukraine early today after the two sides failed to agree on how much Ukraine would pay in 2009.

The cutoff announced late Wednesday by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller threatened a replay of a January 2006 faceoff, when a halt in Russian gas shipments to Ukraine during a similar dispute resulted in a brief reduction of supplies to Europe.

But Miller said Gazprom would continue full shipments to the European Union, which gets about a quarter of its gas from the Russian company, most of it through pipelines that cross Ukraine.

Ukraine made a late-hour appeal for a return to negotiations. The Ukrainian president’s energy adviser, Bohdan Sokolovsky, said a note was delivered to a Russian diplomat in Kiev asking Russia not to turn off the gas and expressing hope an agreement could be reached in the coming days.