Russian gas is no longer sent through Ukraine.
This was announced by Ukraine’s energy minister on Wednesday morning Danish time, according to Reuters.
The Minister of Energy says that this is done to safeguard Ukraine’s national security.
In December, both the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed that by the turn of the year, it would be the end of sending Russian gas through Ukraine to several European countries.
The large Russian gas company Gazprom also says, according to Reuters, that the export of gas to Europe through Ukraine has been stopped on Wednesday morning.
It happened at 8 o’clock Russian time, according to Gazprom. This corresponds to 6 o’clock Danish time.
It is the large Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline, which will no longer transport Russian gas to Europe.
The gas pipeline is one of the last main Russian gas lines to Europe, and at the turn of the year on Wednesday, a five-year contract that has brought North Siberian gas to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria expires.
The prospect of the contract’s expiry has caused concern in several European countries.
This applies, among other things, to Slovakia, where the country’s prime minister, Robert Fico, has argued that it is not only Ukraine’s neighboring countries that should step up to secure gas supplies.
European consumption of Russian gas has been severely curtailed since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.
This is because the EU has wanted to reduce its dependence on Russia.
Soviet and post-Soviet leaders, following the discovery of large quantities of gas in Siberia in the aftermath of World War II, spent about half a century building an energy business that tied the Soviet Union and later Russia with Germany.
At one point, Russia supplied 35 percent of Europe’s gas. But since the Ukraine war, Gazprom has lost market share to Norway, the United States and Qatar.
/ritzau/
Source: www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk
