Russia's state gas company Gazprom says it will file a suit against the Ukrainian national energy company Naftogaz Ukrainy on the allegedly gas-transit shortage to Europe.

Sergei Kupriyanov is the Gazprom spokesman

"For the last 24 hours we sent to the entrance of the gas transporting system of Ukraine 295 million cubic meters of gas, which is more than was requested by the European consumers. At the exit we got only 270, in other words 25 million cubic metres of gas were stolen."

Naftogaz Ukrainy denied the accusation, saying that Russia is not delivering the due quantities to European clients.

It also accused Gazprom of being unwilling to seek a compromise, and said any price increase should be accompanied by a similar increase in the fee Ukraine gets from Russia to move gas through its pipelines on to European customers.

Some European Union countries, such as Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Hungary, said that gas supplies from Russia through pipelines in Ukraine have dropped since Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1 due to failure of price talks.

Naftogaz Ukrainy, however, said that the fall of gas supplies to Romania, which suffers the most, was caused by "technical reasons."