Moscow - Russia and Ukraine today traded bitter accusations after gas deliveries to Europe were abruptly halted, hours after Russia's state energy company, Gazprom, said it had restarted supplies supposed to end the European Union's fuel crisis.

    The EU said "little or no gas" was flowing to countries suffering urgent energy shortages and urged both Russia and Ukraine to release as much gas as possible. Gazprom said Ukraine had stopped gas flows and Russian observers were prevented from inspecting Ukrainian gas stations. Kiev said Russia had "provocatively" sent the gas the wrong way.

    Gazprom said its pumping stations had begun delivering gas at 10.46am Moscow time, following a monitoring deal signed in Brussels yesterday. But four hours later a spokesman for the company said Ukraine was blocking the flow of gas - and accused the US of being behind the decision.

    "We believed yesterday that the door for Russian gas was open but again it's been blocked by the Ukrainians," the Gazprom deputy CEO, Alexander Medvedev, said in a conference call with reporters.

    "It looks like ... they are dancing to the music which is being orchestrated not in Kiev but outside the country."

    Medvedev said he was referring to an agreement signed between Ukraine and the US. He did not name the agreement, but may have been referring to a strategic partnership deal signed last month in Washington that the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said would enhance co-operation over energy security and other matters.

    Most of Europe's gas imports from Russia arrive through the pipelines in Ukraine, and the dispute has left hundreds of thousands without heating during freezing temperatures.

    Russia has accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas to make up for a shortfall since Moscow turned off the tap on 1 January. Ukraine has denied the charge and says Moscow was holding European energy consumers to ransom. The bitter row has left European countries scrabbling to find alternative energy supplies.

    Ukraine's state energy firm, Naftogaz, said today there had not been enough co-ordination over the routes chosen for the gas and the volumes shipped to ensure the smooth transit across Ukraine. "This seriously violates the established practice of reliable functioning of the gas transit system," it said in a statement.

    Ukrainian officials said that Gazprom had "deliberately" sent the gas the wrong way - via a route that would have meant switching off the gas to Ukrainian consumers in the east of the country. "Today's request by Russia for the alleged resumption of gas flows is entirely provocative, because the Ukrainian gas transportation system has been given a technically unrealistic task," Bohdan Sokolovsky, Ukraine's commissioner for energy security, told Interfax.

    Instead of supplying gas via the traditional route, through Ukraine's Belgorod and Rostov region, gas had been sent via a bypass route, he said, which would paralyse supplies to parts of Ukraine. "This is just provocation against Ukraine," he said.

    Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko went further. His office compared Russia's actions to those of the Nazis during the wartime siege of Leningrad. Andrei Kislinksy, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential secretariat, said Moscow was trying to seize control of Ukraine's gas network and topple the pro-western president. The gas war "increasingly resembles the blockade of Leningrad after the failure of the bliztkrieg", Kislinksky said, adding: "We are talking first of all about making president Viktor Yushchenko ... step down as president."

    Today's developments will appall the European Union, which had hoped that supplies would reach the freezing countries of southern and central Europe by later today and tomorrow. It now appears that the breakdown of trust between Moscow and Kiev is so profound and far-reaching that European countries can expect further delays before any gas reaches them.

    Additionally, Moscow and Kiev have also failed to reach basic agreement over who will pay for the "technical" gas needed to resume supplies via Ukraine to the European Union. Ukraine is insisting that Moscow stump up the cost of the gas - some 21 million cubic metres a day. Russia says that Kiev has to pay for it, or get it from its reserves. The two sides have also not resolved their acrimonious bilateral dispute over how much Ukraine will pay for Russian gas in 2009.

    Russia today said it had already informed the European Commission that it has been unable to transport gas to Europe through Ukraine. Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, phoned Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president. Putin told him Russian gas was unable to get into Ukraine's system, adding: "It is shut."

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