A transnational pipeline was shut down on Wednesday after Kyiv refused to renew a prewar agreement that allowed for the transit of Russian gas through its territory.
Marc SantoraAndrew Higgins and Jenny Gross
Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, Andrew Higgins from Warsaw and Jenny Gross from Brussels.
The flow of natural gas through a major pipeline from Russia to Europe was cut off early Wednesday after Ukraine refused to renew an agreement that allowed for the transit of Russian gas through its territory.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had warned for months that he would not renew the prewar contract, which expired at midnight on Dec. 31, because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kyiv’s decision to suspend the flow of gas through a pipeline that had carried Soviet and then Russian gas to Europe for decades is part of a broader campaign by Ukraine and its Western allies to undermine Moscow’s ability to fund its war effort and to limit the Kremlin’s ability to use energy as leverage in Europe.
“This is a historic event,” Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Galushchenko, said in a statement. “Russia is losing markets, it will suffer financial losses.”
The pipeline through Ukraine, built in the Soviet era to carry Siberian gas to European markets, is Russia’s last major gas corridor to Europe following the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany, possibly by Ukraine, and the closure of a route through Belarus to Poland.
The Kremlin-controlled energy giant, Gazprom, issued a statement early on Wednesday confirming that it was no longer sending gas through the pipeline. President Vladimir V. Putin had signaled in a Dec. 19 news conference that the agreement would not be extended. “That’s fine — we will survive, Gazprom will survive,” he said.
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