Russia's energy provider Gazprom has threatened Moldova with cutting its gas supply if the European country doesn't pay its debts in the next 48 hours.

Moldova has apparently not paid what it owes to Gazprom for deliveries by November 22 under a contract agreed last month, the energy giant's spokesman Sergei Kupryanov announced on Monday to Russian TV. 

The soaring price of gas has left Moldova, Europe's poorest country, in a deep crisis.

In October, Moldova declared a month-long state emergency over gas shortages, which caused the country to the extreme step of turning off the country's eternal flame in the capital Chisinau's World War II memorial.

For the first time, Moldova then broke a tradition that saw Russia as the single supplier of gas to the country with a population of 2 million, securing emergency deliveries from Romania, Ukraine and Poland.

The crisis seemed to be over in November, when Moldova and Gazprom reached an agreement on a five-year deal under which the Russia's state-owned giant was bound to provide Moldova with three billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Under the new contract, Moldova agreed to pay $450 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, more than the $250 it used to pay under the previous contract, but less than the $750 initially suggested by Gazprom.

_{Cover image: Olga MALTSEVA/AFP}