Brussels - Russian gas monopoly Gazprom's decision to cut natural-gas supplies to Ukraine has so far had no impact on deliveries to the European Union, EU officials said Friday.

"There has been no change" in the volumes of Russian gas delivered to EU clients, a spokeswoman for the EU's executive, the European Commission, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

However, given the distances involved in transporting Russian gas from Siberia, experts say that it is still too early to conclude definitively that the row has had no impact on EU supplies.

Russia is the EU's largest single supplier of natural gas, and 80 per cent of its deliveries pass through Ukrainian territory.

Three years ago, Gazprom shut off gas supplies to Ukraine in a near-identical row over gas prices and allegedly unpaid bills, causing sudden shortages across much of Europe.

Unlike on that occasion, EU member states had widely anticipated the current shut-off, which comes in the context of increasingly tense relations both between Moscow and Kiev's pro-Western government and between Ukraine's president and prime minister.

EU governments were careful to make sure that their gas stocks were full ahead of winter, meaning that the current shut-off is unlikely to have a short-term impact on supplies, EU sources said.

In recent days, Russia and Ukraine have both conducted intense diplomatic campaigns to present the other side as the troublemaker in the dispute. The prime ministers of both countries called European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso on New Year's Eve to present their respective versions of the row.

An EU expert group on gas supplies is set to meet with member states' representatives in Brussels on January 9. Gazprom is set to send an official to the meeting, while Ukraine is expected to send a delegation to Brussels in the coming days, officials said.

However, analysts say that both sides' reputations have already been tarnished in the row, with the EU increasingly keen to find gas supplies which come from countries other than Russia and pass through countries other than Ukraine.

EU reliance on Russian gas varies from zero in Britain and Ireland to 100 per cent in the Baltic states and Slovakia, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Germany, the EU's largest economy, obtains some 40 per cent of all the gas it uses from Russia. (dpa)