In the past ten days, Ukraine has considerably downscaled its consumption of Russian natural gas. Appearing on Russian television Friday, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller suspected a solvency problem. A New Year grace period allows Ukraine to postpone payment for its December gas until January 11, instead of January 7 as is the demand under the general Russian-Ukrainian gas agreement. Ukrainian default would allow Russia to insist that all future payments are made in advance. Ukrainian insolvency last January led to a disruption in the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe.
