Gazprom, the Russian monopoly natural gas supplier, said on Wednesday that Ukraine's oil and gas company, Naftogaz, has warned that it might lower the amount of gas that is travelling through pipelines across Ukraine toward other parts of Europe.

As a response to Russia’s move to cut 50 percent of the amount of gas delivered to Ukraine due to dispute over the contract and a 600 million dollars debt, Naftogaz officials allegedly threatened through a telegram to cut transit gas supplies going to Western Europe by 2118.64 million cubic feet per day.

Ukraine's national oil and gas company Naftogaz said in a statement, "Uninterrupted transit for European consumers cannot be guaranteed if Ukraine's energy security comes under threat," the Russian agency Novosti reported.

Previously, the Ukrainian officials declared that they would not affect the gas traffic, which accounts for around 25 percent of Europe’s needs, unless their citizens would be threatened.

On Wednesday, the reactions were mixed. Some officials reportedly said that Ukraine would cut from the gas flow in order to compensate its domestic needs, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told the media. On the other hand, the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko pledged that the conflict between Russia and her country would definitely not affect the gas that is delivered to the European Union.

Meanwhile, the European Union declared that it has not been informed and did not depict any decrease in the supply of gas coming from Russia through Ukraine.

Only time will now show how the dispute that Gazprom wants to bee seen as driven by pure commercial reasons will be settled. Gazprom’s chairman is the newly Russian elected president Dmitry Medvedev and critics say that Russia abuses its monopole over gas supplies due to political reasons, especially because of the fact that Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko is making steps to enter NATO and EU and therefore to get rid of the Russian influence that lasts since the communist era.