Ukraine on Wednesday halted supplies of Russian gas to European customers via its pipeline network after a pre-war transit agreement expired at the end of last year.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Haloshenko confirmed on Wednesday morning that Kiev had stopped the crossing “in the interest of national security.”
“This is a historic event. Russia is losing markets and will suffer financial losses. Europe has already decided to phase out Russian gas, and (this) is in line with what Ukraine did today,” Haloshenko said in an update via the messaging app Telegram. .
At a summit in Brussels last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged that Kiev would not allow Moscow to use transportation to make “billions more… from our blood, from the lives of our citizens.” But he briefly kept open the possibility that gas flows would continue if payments to Russia were withheld until the war ended.
Kyiv refuses to extend the agreement
Russian gas company Gazprom said in a statement on Wednesday morning that it had “no technical and legal possibility” to send gas through Ukraine, due to Kiev’s refusal to extend the agreement.
Even as Russian troops and tanks move into Ukraine in 2022, Russian natural gas has continued to flow through the country’s network of pipelines — built when Ukraine and Russia were part of the Soviet Union — to Europe, under a five-year agreement. Gazprom made money from gas and Ukraine collected transit fees.
Before the war, Russia supplied the European Union with about 40% of its natural gas needs via pipelines. The gas flows through four pipeline systems, one under the Baltic Sea, one through Belarus and Poland, one through Ukraine, and one under the Black Sea via Turkey to Bulgaria.
Russian gas outage caused European energy crisis
After the war began, Russia cut off most supplies via the Baltic and Belarus-Poland pipelines, due to disagreements over demands to be paid in rubles. The Baltic Pipeline was blown up in an act of sabotage, but details of the attack remain murky.
Cutting off Russian supplies caused an energy crisis in Europe. Germany was forced to spend billions of euros to establish floating terminals to import liquefied natural gas, which comes by ship, not by pipeline. Users cut back as prices rise. Norway and the United States filled this gap, becoming the largest suppliers.
Europe considered cutting off Russian supplies as energy blackmail and outlined plans to completely eliminate Russian gas imports by 2027.
Russia’s share of the EU pipeline natural gas market fell sharply to about eight percent in 2023, according to data from the European Commission. The Ukrainian transit route serves Austria and Slovakia, members of the European Union, which have long obtained the bulk of their natural gas needs from Russia, but have recently rushed to diversify supplies.
Among the most affected countries will be Moldova, a candidate country for European Union membership, which has been receiving Russian gas via Ukraine, and has taken emergency measures as residents prepare for a harsh winter and looming power outages.
Ukrainian prisoners of war reunited with their families in an emotional scene on Monday after they were released in a major exchange between their country and Russia. One former prisoner said his five-year-old son probably did not recognize him because he last saw him when he was two.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski on Wednesday described Ukraine’s move to halt supplies as a “victory” for opponents of the Kremlin’s policies. In a post on the website
“It affects all of us in the EU”: Slovak Prime Minister
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced on Wednesday that stopping the flow of gas through Ukraine “will greatly affect all of us in the European Union, but not Russia.”
Fico, whose views on Russia differed sharply from the European mainstream, had previously criticized Kiev’s refusal to extend the transit deal, and threatened to halt electricity supplies to Ukraine in response.
Moscow can still send gas to Hungary, as well as to non-EU countries Turkey and Serbia, via the TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea.
The continuing decline in Russian gas supplies to European countries has also prompted it to accelerate the integration of Ukrainian energy networks with its neighbors in the West.
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