Eastern Europe braces for end to Russian gas supplies

Ukraine will block Russian gas supplies via its territory in several days, effectively halting its transit to Slovakia, Moldova and, to some extent, Hungary.

Kyiv said it would not renew an agreement on Russian gas transit expiring on December 31 as Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted last week Kyiv would not let Moscow “earn additional billions on our blood”.

Russian gas accounted for less than 10 percent of the European Union’s gas imports in 2023.

In 2021, a year before the invasion started, it made up over 40 percent.

But eastern European EU members still depend largely on Russian gas for geographical and political reasons.

EU and NATO members Hungary and Slovakia have maintained close ties with the Kremlin despite the invasion.

Russia has been delivering gas to Europe by two routes since a series of underwater explosions in 2022 damaged the Nord Stream pipeline that carried gas to northern Germany via the Baltic Sea.

The TurkStream pipeline under the Black Sea and its mainland extension Balkan Stream supply Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.

Supplies via Ukraine are based on a five-year contract signed by Ukraine’s Naftogaz and GTSOU pipeline operator with Russian giant Gazprom in 2019, which will now expire.

Official data put gas volume transported by this route in 2023 at 14.65 billion cubic metres, slightly less than half of all Russian gas flowing into Europe.

Austria, which still bought 90 percent of its gas from Russia last summer, terminated its deal with Gazprom in December after six decades.

“Austria has solved it by quasi cancelling the Russian contract, citing its past non-performance,” Andras Deak, an energy security expert at Ludovika University in Budapest, told AFP.

Neighbouring Slovakia is “sticking to the long-term contract, which, if the Ukrainians cut off transit, will not be… fulfilled,” he added.

Slovakia’s nationalist-leaning Prime Minister Robert Fico visited Moscow last weekend to discuss supplies, following a spat with Zelensky at an EU summit in Brussels.

Zelensky then said Fico “wants to help Putin earn money to fund the war”.

Besides geopolitical reasons, Bratislava prefers to import Russian gas “because it is cheaper”, said Alexander Duleba from the Slovak Foreign Policy Association.

He said Gazprom paid for gas transit through Ukraine, but if Slovakia bought gas from other suppliers, it would have to pay for transit itself.

SPP, a company supplying gas to 1.5 million Slovak households, said it could find other suppliers.

But “any other alternative will be significantly more expensive”, its spokesman Ondrej Sebesta told AFP.

He put the extra cost at 150 million euros ($156 million), mainly in transit fees.

Moldova is already bracing for energy cuts despite taking steps to diversify supplies.

The former Soviet republic gets 70 percent of its electricity from the Cuciurgan power station based in the separatist region of Transnistria, which uses Russian gas imported via Ukraine.

Moldova’s pro-European President Maia Sandu recently said that there are other transit routes bypassing Ukraine that Russia could use to deliver the gas.