KIEV, June 4 - Russia’s growing pressure over natural gas supplies and an emerging constitutional crisis in Ukraine are coordinated attempts to reverse the country’s pro-Western course, a senior official at President Viktor Yushchenko’s office said Thursday.

“What happens in Parliament and what happens in the gas sector are parts of the same chain which Ukraine is being dragged to the gallows,” Bohdan Sokolovskiy, Yushchenko’s energy security envoy, said.