MOSCOW — As European diplomats labored to patch up a flagging peace agreement in Ukraine on Tuesday, Russia warned the Ukrainians that they could run out of natural gas within two days because of a dispute over payments.
The warning by Aleksei B. Miller, the chief executive of Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian energy behemoth, illustrated how the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine are hardly limited to the battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where a cease-fire agreed to nearly two weeks ago has still not fully taken hold.
Russia has long used its muscle as the region’s major energy supplier to wield political and economic influence, particularly in disputes with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. A bitter feud over gas payments has been a subplot of the wider political dispute between Moscow and Kiev over the past year.
As part of that dispute, Russia last year cut off supplies and ended a longstanding practice of selling gas to Ukraine on credit and instead demanded prepayment.
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The organization has complained in recent days that its observer teams could not reach some areas, including Debaltseve.
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris
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