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Lithuania.
“Obviously, we could not satisfy all those requests,” he told journalists.
Gazprom, already dealing with a cold wave in Russia, had said it could not pump additional gas to Western Europe, after European Union officials and energy firms said the Russian giant’s deliveries had dropped in nine EU nations.
On Monday flows returned to normal levels in six EU nations and were improving in Italy, Germany and Romania, according to the European Commission.
But Medvedev insisted European countries had enough reserves to avoid major problems.
“Consumers in Europe did not suffer because gas was taken from underground storage facilities and there are enough reserves for at least 30 days,” Medvedev said.
The EU imports about four-fifths of its gas requirements and Russia accounts for about a third of Europe’s gas imports, according to EU data.
In Romania, authorities employed explosives, icebreakers and tractors yesterday in the battle to overcome Europe’s big freeze, as dozens more died of hypothermia and tens of thousands remained cut off by snow.
Around 400 people have now died from the cold weather in Europe since the cold snap began 11 days ago and forecasters warned there would be no early let-up to some of the lowest temperatures seen in decades.
While there was some respite for people in Ukraine – where more than 130 deaths have been recorded – the mercury plunged overnight to minus 39,4 degrees Celsius in the Kvilda region of the Czech Republic.
More bodies were found either on the streets, in their cars or in their homes in Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hungary and across the Balkans.
Authorities in Serbia said that 70 000 people were trapped in snow-bound villages in the south as officials declared an “emergency situation”.
In a dramatic effort to prevent two of the country’s main waterways from becoming completely blocked, officials called up army explosive experts.
As ice layers threatened to cause widespread floods on the Ibar, Alexander Prodanovic, the country’s top water official, said dynamite would be detonated to break up the huge blocks which had formed.
Authorities also hired icebreaking ships from Hungary to ease the flow on the Danube, the main waterway for all commercial shipping in Serbia. The port authority said the Danube was navigable around Belgrade but with difficulty.
There was similar chaos elsewhere in the Balkans with train linking Croatia’s central coastal town of Split and the capital Zagreb derailing as a result of a snow drift. There were no reports of injuries.
The army, firefighters and rescue services were trying to get food and medicine to the population in several hundred villages in southern Croatia where snow up to 1.4 metres (4.6 feet) high was piled up.
“This is a disaster, we have been cut off from the rest of the world . . . Snowploughs cannot reach us, so we have to walk to get some bread and basic things,” Marko Ancic told the Slobodna Dalmacija daily after trekking some 17 kilometres from his village to reach the nearest town.
Large parts of eastern and southern Bosnia were also cut off by the snow and avalanches. There has been no contact since Friday with the hamlet of Zijemlje, some 30 kilometres from the town of Mostar.
“We don’t know what is going on there. They have not had electricity since Friday and phone lines are cut, they have no running water,” Radovan Palavestra, the mayor of Mostar, told AFP.
“There are elderly people who are very fragile and children including a baby of two months.”
A helicopter which should have flown in aid to Zijemlje was unable to take off yesterday morning because of heavy snowfall.
In Romania, two heavily pregnant women had to be flown out by helicopter in the eastern area of Iasi after their villages were completely cut off. Another pregnant woman had to be ferried to hospital by tractor in the eastern Paltinis area after her ambulance became stuck in the snow.
Schools were shut in large parts of the country, including Bucharest, while many train services were cancelled. Around 40 percent of roads were also closed, although flights did resume from Bucharest airport.
Snowstorms lashed Bulgaria, a day after eight people drowned in raging rivers and the icy waters from a broken dam that submerged a whole village to the southeast.
The UN weather service said temperatures would remain low until March.
“We might expect the change in the current cold wave to to start easing from the start of next week up to the end of the month,” Omar Baddour, a scientist at the World Meteorological Organisation, told reporters.
It was a similar message from Britain where forecasters said the cold spell could last for two more weeks and heavy snow at the weekend.
And in France, authorities appealed to households to save power where possible as they predicted electricity use could hit a record high.
China is also experiencing a colder winter than usual and temperatures will continue to fall until mid-February, meteoroligists said yesterday.
“Over the weekend, a new cold front will bring precipitation and a sudden temperature drop to most parts of China, and after mid-February, temperatures will climb in fluctuations,” Huang Xiaoyu, chief forecaster of the China Meteorological Administration, told China Daily on Monday.
She added that the average temperature in China in January was about one degree Celcius, lower than the usual level.
The National Meteorological Center issued an alert for a cold snap on Monday, predicting the temperature drop up to 14 degrees Celcius before today.
China is not alone in having unusually cold weather. Europe is experiencing a bitter cold spell that has claimed lives and paralysed traffic.
Wang Qiwei, of the National Climate Center of the China Meteorological Administration, said the widespread cold is caused by high atmospheric pressure in the Arctic.
When the atmospheric pressure in the Artic is higher than the area outside the pole, the cold air spreads.
The air pressure increased rapidly in the Arctic in mid-January, causing the fast spread of cold to Europe and Asia, Wang said. – AFP/China Daily.