Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom, Russia's natural-gas exporter, threatened to cut supplies of the fuel to Ukraine March 3 if an accord on the repayment of debt isn't signed by next week.

State-run Gazprom will reduce deliveries by 25 percent at 10 a.m. that day if Ukraine doesn't sign an agreement reached Feb. 12 on debt and future deliveries, spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said in an e-mailed statement today.

``This can't go on any longer,'' Kupriyanov said in the statement. Ukraine has used 1.9 billion cubic meters of gas without paying for it, he said. ``There has been no official response, the documents haven't been signed yet.''

Ukraine, which gets 71 percent of its gas through Russia, averted Gazprom's previous threat to cut supplies from Feb. 12 when President Viktor Yushchenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin reached the still unsigned agreement.

Gazprom said at the time Ukraine owed $1.5 billion for gas delivered since November, including $500 million from the start of the year alone. Gazprom supplied Russian fuel this year to compensate for shortfalls in cheaper Central Asian gas.

Yushchenko spoke to Putin today about the gas debt, according to a statement on his Web site. The Ukrainian leader told his government to repay it in full ``as soon as possible'' and ordered Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko to report by 9 a.m. tomorrow, according to the statement.

2006 Standoff

The threatened cutoff is reminiscent of a price dispute in January 2006, when Gazprom turned off all Ukrainian deliveries for three days, causing gas volumes to fall in the European Union. About a fifth of Europe's gas comes from Gazprom via Ukrainian pipelines.

Ukraine will repay its debt to Russia for natural-gas supplies by April 14, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov said Feb. 15 on Ukrainian TV channel 5. NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine's state oil and gas company, said five days later that it had paid almost $280 million.

Putin said Ukraine won't meet the debt-payment deadline because it's continuing to use gas without paying, according to Yushchenko's statement. The repaid part of the debt is not ``adequate to the whole debt and is not enough for stable supplies,'' said Putin, according the statement.

Russia and Ukraine also agreed Feb. 12 to establish two new companies to handle the gas trade, replacing RosUkrEnergo AG, the only company currently allowed to import gas into Ukraine. Gazprom and Naftogaz will equally share ownership of the companies.

To contact the reporters on this story: Torrey Clark in Moscow at tclark8@bloomberg.net; Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 26, 2008 11:55 EST