Russia is no longer able to send natural gas to Europe through Ukraine’s pipelines after a five-year deal, struck before the war began, expired on Wednesday.
It marks the end of a long-standing arrangement that used Ukraine as a conduit for westbound Russian gas — an agreement that continued even as full-scale war broke out in 2022.
European countries that have gained this fuel, such as Slovakia and Austria, paid Russia for this energy. Reuters estimated in December that the Russian economy would gain about $5 billion in 2024 fuel pipelines in Ukraine.
The news firm also estimated that Kyiv deserves to obtain between $ 800 and $ 1 billion this year upon receiving shipping costs.
But Ukraine had indicated for months that he planned to let the agreement expire on January 1, 2025, and that he is now intelligent in that commitment.
“When Putin won the Russian presidency more than 25 years ago, the annual transit of fuel through Ukraine in Europe totaled more than 130 billion cubic meters. Today, this is at 0,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote.
Ukraine Energy Minister Herman Haushchenko said the Transit Agreement had ceased for national security reasons.
The Russian fuel conglomerate that Gazprom showed on Wednesday that his energy flows through Ukraine had stopped, which raised “a repeated and particular rejection of the Ukrainians to make those agreements bigger. “
The now disappeared Ukrainian-Russian agreement laid the complexities of the war and its political consequences in Europe, with the countries of the European Union that suffered their dependence on Russian power by providing weapons to Ukraine and tried to sanction Moscow.
And as thousands died every week amid bitter fighting in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Kursk, gas flowing through the same areas allowed both Kyiv and Moscow to profit off each other’s goods and facilities.
Ukraine has channeled Russian fuel to Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and energy consumers, first, expressed their considerations not to locate a source of choice in time if the agreement required.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico criticized Kyiv’s resolution in a New Year’s address, saying reasonable Russian fuel to Europe would create a “drastic impact” on EU nations but would not harm Russia.
Austria, on the other hand, reduced ties with Gazprom in December, accumulating Russia from blackmail from the Austrian fuel corporate MVNO through the use of energy as a bargaining chip on Europe for Ukraine.
Austria’s loss as a visitor is a fresh blow to Moscow’s fuel industry, while Europe hears about its Russian energy supply.
The EU said in March that about 8% of its herbal fuel arrived here from Russia in 2023, up to 40% in 2021.
From the beginning of the war, the United States and Norway have two of the greatest winners among Herbal fuel suppliers. The EU said that fuel purchases in the United States in 2023 had tripled since 2021, filling only around 20% of the fuel imports of the Union.
Some countries on the continent, such as Hungary, an EU member led through a president who maintains close ties with Moscow, have yet to use Russian fuel through the Turkstream pipeline, which runs along the Black Sea to the Balkans.
Moldova, which is not an EU member state, and its separatist-controlled territory, Transistria, is barely affected through the Ukraine-Russia deal, the country’s largest power plant traditionally relies on Russian fuel.
Correction: January 2, 2025 – An earlier edition of this story has seriously extinguished the name of Robert Fico. He is the Prime Minister of Slovakia, the president.
Hop