Russian gas stops flowing to Europe via Ukraine after agreement expires

Russian gas stopped flowing to Europe via Ukraine yesterday, ending a major energy route that goes back to Soviet times and had even survived three years of full-scale war between the two states.

- Shaun Walker

Ukraine cut off the transit route after an agreement signed in 2019 expired in the early hours of New Year's Day, marking a new milestone in Europe weaning itself off Russian gas supplies over the past few years, and prompting immediate power cuts for hundreds of thousands of people in a breakaway region of Moldova.

Russia's Gazprom said in a statement that it had stopped sending gas via Ukraine as of 8am Moscow time yesterday. Ukraine's energy minister, German Galushchenko, called the move "historic", while the country's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described it in a post on social media as "one of Moscow's biggest defeats".

Zelenskyy wrote: "When Putin was given power in Russia more than 25 years ago, the annual gas pumping through Ukraine to Europe was 130-plus billion cubic metres. Today the transit of Russian gas is 0."

The move prompted angry words from Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, who had lobbied against the decision in recent months.

"Halting gas transit via Ukraine will have a drastic impact on us all in the EU but not on the Russian Federation," he wrote on Facebook.

Elsewhere, however, there was celebration over a further step away from Russian energy dependency. Poland's foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, called the development "a new victory" for the continent.