Energy: Winter chill for Europe as Russia suspends gas transit via Ukraine
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: With Ukraine refusing to renew a 2019 energy transit agreement through its war-torn territory, Russia’s energy behemoth Gazprom on Wednesday suspended the passage of natural gas to Europe, threatening to worsen the Continent’s struggling economies as the New Year 2025 unfolded.
The Ukrainian move came to pressurize Europe—and the United States—to do more against Russia, ahead of the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump as the next US President. During his presidential election campaign in 2024, Trump had promised to take steps to stop the nearly three-year-old ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Gazprom cited the non-renewal of the agreement, which officially expired on Wednesday, January 1, 2025, as the reason for the suspension, the media reported.
The energy giant announced on Telegram‘s social media platform that it halted the flow of natural gas from Russia to Europe through a long-standing network of pipelines that carried natural gas through Ukraine for nearly six decades. This move followed Ukraine’s decision not to renew a key agreement, signed in 2019, which permitted the transit of Russian gas through its territory.
Until a few years ago, the key pipeline that significantly fueled the European economy, originally built during the Soviet era to transport Siberian gas to European markets, was one of the last major gas routes from Russia to Europe.
“On January 1, 2025, at 8:00 Moscow time, the documents signed on December 30, 2019, expired: the agreement between PJSC Gazprom and NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine on organizing the transportation of Russian gas through the territory of Ukraine and the agreement on cooperation between the operators of the Russian and Ukrainian GTS – PJSC Gazprom and LLC Gas Transportation System Operator of Ukraine,” the energy giant said in the Russian language.
“Due to the repeated and explicit refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements, Gazprom was deprived of the technical and legal ability to supply gas for transit through the territory of Ukraine from January 1, 2025. Since 8:00 Moscow time, Russian gas has not been supplied for its transportation through the territory of Ukraine,” it stated.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Europe has significantly reduced its consumption of Russian gas. However, some countries like Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, and several Balkan nations, still rely on Russian gas flowing through Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had threatened to shut down the gas pipeline, despite retaliatory threats from neighboring countries including Slovakia and Hungary, which depend heavily on Russian gas.
Although Zelenskyy was expected to announce the shutdown, his New Year’s Eve address did not mention it.
