MOSCOW, Russia Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has threatened to cut off natural gas supplies to Europe and Ukraine on Saturday if Ukraine fails to pay for its gas deliveries by then.The warning comes less than two months after the end of a harsh dispute between Moscow and Kiev that left much of Europe with severely reduced energy supplies for two weeks during a bitterly cold January. Backed by Ukraine's president, Ukraine's Security Service launched a raid Wednesday on Naftogaz, the country's state-run gas company. They were searching for documents in an apparent effort to derail the gas deal Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko reached with Russia's Gazprom in January, according to a Naftogaz spokesman. Putin said he is concerned about the raid "because we're hearing about attempts to seize the transit contract. Not its copy, but the original of the transit contract." The nasty dispute between the two countries at the start of the year affected millions of Europeans who depend on Russian gas supplies that go through Ukraine.
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