Russia is no longer to send herbal fuel to Europe through the Ukrainian pipes after a five -year contract, he concluded before starting the war, he expired on Wednesday.
It marks the completion of a long-standing arrangement that used Ukraine as a conduit for Russian fuel to the west, an arrangement that continued when a 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 calculated in December that the Russian economy would earn around $ five billion in fuel pipes of 2024 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 signaled for months that it planned to let the deal expire on Jan. 1, 2025, and that it is now smart in this compromise.
“When Putin was presented with the Russian presidency more than 25 years ago, the annual gas transit through Ukraine to Europe totaled more than 130 billion cubic meters. Today, it equals 0,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote.
Ukraine Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said the Transit Agreement had been terminated for national security reasons.
The Russian gas conglomerate Gazprom confirmed on Wednesday that its energy flows through Ukraine had stopped, citing “repeated and explicit refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements.”
The Ukrainian-Russian agreement, now disappeared, has exposed the complexities of the war and its political consequences in Europe, the countries of the European Union had difficulties in reducing their dependence on Russian power that weapons to Ukraine and tried to sanction Moscow .
And as thousands of other people have died both one and the week in the sour of fighting in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kursk, the fuel that flows in the same spaces has allowed kyiv and Moscow to take merits of assets and facilities of others.
Ukraine has been channeling Russian fuel to Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and energy consumers, first, expressed considerations that they would not locate a source of choice in time if the agreement required.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico criticized Kiev’s resolution in a New Year’s address, saying that abolishing reasonable Russian fuel in Europe would create a “drastic impact” on EU nations but hurt Russia.
Austria, on the other hand, cut ties with Gazprom in December, accusing Russia of blackmailing the Austrian gas company OMV by using energy as a bargaining chip over European support of Ukraine.
Losing Austria as a customer was yet another blow to Moscow’s gas industry as Europe weans itself off 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 of the continent, such as Hungary, a member of the EU led through a president who maintains close ties with Moscow, still have that the Russian fuel through the Turkstream pipe, which runs along the Black Sea to the Balkans .
Moldova, which is a Member State of the EU, and is expected that its territory controlled by separatism, transnistria, is affected by the Ukraine-Russian agreement, since the largest force plant in the country has traditionally depended on Russian gas .
Correction: January 2, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated Robert Fico’s title. He’s the prime minister of Slovakia, not the president.
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