Era Of Cheap Russian Gas To EU Ends As Of 2025
(MENAFN- AzerNews)
Russian gas has stopped flowing to EU states via Ukraine after a
five-year deal expired, marking the end of a decades-long
arrangement, Azernews reports via BBC.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that his
country would not allow Russia to "earn additional billions on our
blood" and had given the EU a year to prepare.
The European Commission said the continent's gas system was
"resilient and flexible" and that it could cope with the change.
Slovakia, however, could face disruption and Moldova, which is not
in the EU, is already suffering shortages.
Russia can still send gas to Hungary, Türkiye and Serbia through
the TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea.
Russian company Gazprom confirmed that gas exports via Ukraine
to Europe stopped from 08:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on
Wednesday.
Moscow has transported gas to Europe through Ukraine since
1991.
While immediate effects are light, the strategic and symbolic
impact for the whole of Europe is enormous.
Russia has lost an important market, but its president, Vladimir
Putin, says EU countries will suffer most.
The EU has significantly reduced imports of gas from Russia since
it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but a
number of eastern member states still depend largely on the
supplies, making Russia about €5bn ($5.2bn; £4.2bn) a year.
Russian gas was less than 10% of the EU's gas imports in 2023,
according to the bloc. That figure was 40% in 2021.
But several EU members, including Slovakia and Austria,
continued to import significant amounts of gas from Russia.
Austria's energy regulator said that it did not forecast any
disruption as it had diversified sources and built up reserves.
But the end of the transit deal has already caused serious
tensions with Slovakia, which is now the main entry point of
Russian gas into the EU and earned transit fees from piping the gas
on to Austria, Hungary and Italy.
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