Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday told his Ukrainian counterpart that Central Asian countries were urging Moscow to increase gas prices for Ukraine.
Putin made the comments at the end of talks in Moscow with Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko during which he also threatened to restrict military cooperation if the neighbouring country joined the NATO military alliance.
"We would like to move to European prices for Ukraine little by little, but our central Asian partners want to do so from January 1, 2009," Putin told journalists.
"We are negotiating on this question. But it is still too early to talk of results," he added.
The price Ukraine pays for gas imports from Russia could more than double to over 400 dollars (254 euros) per 1,000 cubic metres in 2009, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller told reporters earlier this week.
Russia has a number of times reduced or cut altogether gas supplies to its neighbour Ukraine, raising concerns in European Union countries about Moscow's reliability as an energy supplier.
Meanwhile, on Ukraine's NATO ambitions, Putin said Russia remained opposed.
"We believe that the enlargement of NATO is counter productive from the point of view of international security," he said.
Despite appeals from US President George W. Bush, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, at its April Bucharest summit, refused to put Ukraine on a definite track for membership in the Western military alliance.
Wary of alienating a resurgent Russia, European leaders denied both Ukraine and Georgia access to the alliance's Membership Action Plan, or MAP, which grooms states for accession.
