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Bloomberg reported last June that Russia-Turkey hub plans had been shelved due to technical difficulties in supplying CEE from Turkey and bilateral disagreements. Neither side confirmed or denied the report, but now that the US has captured more of the CEE market through the“Vertical Gas Corridor” pipeline, the odds of the Russia-Turkey hub ever being built have declined.

The Duran's Alex Christoforou wrote an insightful post on X about this, which importantly noted that the“Eastern Mediterranean (Israel and Cyprus) is watching the start of this vertical corridor closely as it can be utilized to sell future EastMed gas into Europe.”

The“EastMed” refers to the proposed underwater pipeline of the same name for exporting Israel's enormous offshore gas reserves to the European Union. Its completion would likely completely eliminate the need for Russian gas in CEE when combined with US LNG.

Reuters reported last month that“Turkey's gas shift threatens Russia and Iran's last big European market”, which drew attention to how increased domestic production and LNG imports could greatly reduce Turkey's future need for Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline.

US President Donald Trump's threatened sanctions, including tariffs as high as 500%, on states that continue to import Russian energy without credible plans to wean themselves off of it, could accelerate this trend.

Russia wouldn't just lose tens of billions of dollars' worth of yearly revenue if all the American plans succeed, but tensions with Turkey might become unmanageable if the complex energy interdependence that tied them together until now is broken.

It's already expected that Turkey will inject Western influence into Central Asia through the new TRIPP corridor, thus posing challenges along Russia's entire southern periphery that will further complicate Turkish-Russian ties.

If their gas hub plans are essentially frozen or are officially canceled and Turkey begins importing less Russian gas from TurkStream, then Turkey might be emboldened to more aggressively challenge Russia on this front.