Ukraine will block Russian gas supplies via its territory in several days, effectively halting its transit to Slovakia, Moldova and, to some extent, Hungary.
Kyiv said it would not renew an agreement on Russian gas transit expiring on Dec.31 as Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted last week Kyiv would not let Moscow “earn additional billions on our blood.”
Strong dependence
Russian gas accounted for less than 10% of the EU’s gas imports in 2023.
In 2021, a year before the invasion started, it made up over 40%.
But Eastern European EU members still depend largely on Russian gas for geographical and political reasons.
EU and NATO members Hungary and Slovakia have maintained close ties with the Kremlin despite the invasion.
Russia has been delivering gas to Europe by two routes since a series of underwater explosions in 2022 damaged the Nord Stream pipeline that carried gas to northern Germany via the Baltic Sea.
The TurkStream pipeline under the Black Sea and its mainland extension Balkan Stream supply Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.
Supplies via Ukraine are based on a five-year contract signed by Ukraine’s Naftogaz and GTSOU pipeline operator with Russian giant Gazprom in 2019, which will now expire.
Official data put gas volume transported by this route in 2023 at 14.65 billion cubic meters, slightly less than half of all Russian gas flowing into Europe.
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Slovakia on the front line
Austria, which still bought 90% of its gas from Russia last summer, terminated its deal with Gazprom in December after six decades.
“Austria has solved it by quasi canceling the Russian contract, citing its past non-performance,” Andras Deak, an energy security expert at Ludovika University in Budapest, told AFP.
Neighboring Slovakia is “sticking to the long-term contract, which, if the Ukrainians cut off transit, will not be ... fulfilled,” he added.
Slovakia’s nationalist-leaning Prime Minister Robert Fico visited Moscow last weekend to discuss supplies, following a spat with Zelensky at an EU summit in Brussels.
Zelensky then said Fico “wants to help Putin earn money to fund the war.”
Besides geopolitical reasons, Bratislava prefers to import Russian gas “because it is cheaper,” said Alexander Duleba from the Slovak Foreign Policy Association.
He said Gazprom paid for gas transit through Ukraine, but if Slovakia bought gas from other suppliers, it would have to pay for transit itself.
SPP, a company supplying gas to 1.5 million Slovak households, said it could find other suppliers.
But “any other alternative will be significantly more expensive,” its spokesman Ondrej Sebesta told AFP.
He put the extra cost at 150 million euros ($156 million), mainly in transit fees.
Moldova on alert
Moldova is already bracing for energy cuts despite taking steps to diversify supplies.
The former Soviet republic gets 70% of its electricity from the Cuciurgan power station based in the separatist region of Transnistria, which uses Russian gas imported via Ukraine.
Moldova’s pro-European President Maia Sandu recently said that there are other transit routes bypassing Ukraine that Russia could use to deliver the gas.
“But it seems that Gazprom is not ready to keep its contractual obligations,” she added.
Sandu slammed the Kremlin’s “blackmail” possibly aimed at destabilizing Moldova several months before a general election in 2025.
Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries, declared a 60-day state of energy emergency in mid-December.
It will have to buy power from neighboring Romania and pay more.
Hungary almost safe
Unlike its neighbors, Hungary receives most Russian gas via TurkStream.
It gets only a fragment via Ukraine and will not be hurt by Kyiv’s decision to block the supplies.
But Prime Minister Viktor Orban said last week that “we don’t want to give up” this route because of the reasonable price.
While Budapest leads talks with Kyiv and Moscow, Orban suggested his country might play a “trick” as it would buy Russian gas before it enters Ukraine.
“Then what comes through Ukrainian territory will no longer be Russian gas, but Hungarian,” he added.
Energy security expert Deak said that Hungary risks being “left as the last Gazprom client in the EU.”
It will then face mounting “political pressure” from the EU to get rid of its energy dependence on Russia, he added.
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