Gazprom's Alexander Medvedev tells Faisal Islam that the energy giant has never created problems for its partners.  Key quotes from Faisal Islam's interview with Alexander Medvedev:

"This is a really strange situation when both Russia and Europe became hostage of behaviour of Ukrainians which are not thinking neither in the interest of their own county and the interest of European countries as well"

"We should make a difference between contractual responsibility and we are fully in compliance with our contracts. We are delivering to the border of Ukraine as much gas as necessary for European customers."

"As a result of behaviour of Ukraine, who started to stall the gas both from export pipeline as well as from underground storage which doesn't belong to them, this situtation began to escalate. We have just asked Ukraine to return the gas they have stolen."

"It's not like Kintergarten toys... It's really a very serious matter and all of our technical experts are doing their utmost in order to not put in danger the system."

"We are really very worried about the situation because there is a cold front around Europe and again, we are delivering all gas destinated to European customers to the borders of Ukraine but they just unilaterally shut down export pipelines."

"It's quite obvious that it's high time that the Ukrainians will behave in a civilised way because this is examples of real barbarian behaviour."

"We are heavily dependent together with Europe on transit via Ukraine, that is why believe it is necessary that Ukraine will be in compliance with obligations to the present countries and not to challenge the existing contracts, because contract is black and white, stamped and signed."

"In the long term, in order to increase security of supply it is quite obvious that it is necessary to diversify export routes."

"We never played politics and we'll never play because if you look at the history, in more than 40 years of supply we've never created any problems for our partners. Always built our relations on mutual respect and cooperation, because we are mutually dependent."

Commenting on the latest developments in the stand-off between Russia and the Ukraine, Faisal Islam told Samira Ahmed:

"There's been a dramatic escalation overnight, this problem's been brewing for a few days and it goes back a few years too. We're told that three pipelines out of the Ukraine were basically shut down.

"Talking to people from Gazprom they said gas supply into eastern Europe from Ukraine has been reduced by 7 times. Austria's gas supply is down 90 per cent and this just as an Arctic chill bites Europe.

"Three perspectives on this story - Russia's, Ukraine's, somewhere within that there's a murky truth. What Russia says is that it cut off the domestic supply to Ukraine; Ukraine says that actually the gas that's not coming to Ukraine was the supply meant for Europe.

"Both, technically could be true; both could be false. Details of these contracts are complex and secret. What we do know - this is having very serious physical impact on Easter Europe. It hasn't affected Britain physically yet because we only import 2-3 per cent of our gas from Russia - although that's set to increase.

"In that interview (see accompanying video), he also mentions still, despite all this controversy, Gazprom expect 10 per cent of our gas needs to come from Russia so this is a taste of things to come.

"Interesting thing about EU - how do they respond? As a continent, or do individual countries go to grab the gas? If you're a politician in any country thinking that in this cold weather people might suffer from no gas, you're going to grab that gas straight away. That's a real fear - we're not there yet, but this could spiral."