* Needs the money to buy Russian gas to store underground
* Ukraine already started storing gas in April
(Adds comments by EU spokesman, Russian deputy minister)
By David Brunnstrom
LUXEMBOURG, June 16 (Reuters) - Ukraine needs $4 billion in credits to buy Russian gas for its underground storage and hopes to raise the funds through European banks, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said on Tuesday.
"We are talking about four billion dollars," Tymoshenko told a news conference after meeting European Union officials in Luxembourg.
"We are today working on the idea of borrowing these credit resources in European banks and the European side is favouring this as well as the Russian side."
She said she believed Naftogaz "is going to be able to have the credit resources necessary in order to do this operation."
A spokesman for the EU's Executive Commission in Brussels said Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso had "acknowledged the seriousness of the situation and undertook to continue to look for a solution with EU member states, industry and the International financial institutions".
In Paris, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin said Moscow was "preoccupied" with developments in Ukraine.
"We want to confer with Europe to help Ukraine resolve the problem, this situation, which is essentially due to financial complexities and to Ukraine's capacity to make payments," he told reporters after talks with French officials.
"We would like to ensure the stability of gas supplies during next winter."
PRESIDENT AGAINST PRIME MINISTER
Tymoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko have been at odds on how to finance state energy company Naftogaz, one of a long list of issues pitting the two former allies from the pro-Western "Orange Revolution" against each other.
Yushchenko accuses Tymoshenko's government of pursuing policies that will bankrupt Naftogaz, including the use of credits to purchase imports of Russian gas. He said company credits to be repaid totalled 74 billion hryvnias ($9.7 billion) compared to 56 billion at the start of the year.
Tymoshenko says she is making every effort to make Naftogaz a viable company and has promised prompt payment for supplies to prevent any repetition of a January standoff with Russian giant Gazprom that cut off supplies to Europe for more than two weeks.
In her comments to reporters, Tymoshenko said storage and continuous supplies of gas were important issues for all sides in the trade -- Russia, Ukraine and the EU.
She said she had told EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso that Ukraine had already started storing gas in April.
"We have always paid for the gas that we have received and are partners that can be counted on," she said.
"I would like to say that everything is going to happen in a very successful fashion and there is no reason to expect any difficulties for gas transit to EU countries for Russian natural gas." (Additional reporting by Pete Harrison in Brussels and Tamora Vidaillet in Paris, writing by Ron Popeski in Kiev)