OAN Staff Blake Wolf
2:03 PM – Wednesday, January 1, 2025
After decades of supplying European countries with Russian gas, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the United States to increase gas supplies to Europe after Russian gas exports through Ukraine were suspended. I asked for it.
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Ukraine's energy minister said Ukraine's refusal to renew the long-standing agreement was “in the interest of national security.”
“We have stopped transporting Russian gas. This is a historic event. Russia is losing its market and will suffer economic losses,” said Herman Khrushchenko, Ukraine's energy minister. “Europe has already decided to phase out Russian gas, [this] That matches what Ukraine did today. ”
Despite Russian gas being withdrawn from the European market, the shutdown will not result in higher gas prices for European Union (EU) residents, as the Russian gas outage was long anticipated and prepared for. Officials claim this is not expected.
“Europe's gas infrastructure is sufficiently flexible to supply non-Russian gas,” a European Commission spokesperson said. “From 2022 onwards, significant new LNG (liquefied natural gas) import capacity has been strengthened.”
“We did our homework and were well prepared for this scenario,” Austrian Energy Minister Leonor Gewessler added in the X-Post.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenkshi said his government would no longer allow the Russian government to make “billions more with our blood and the lives of our people.”
President Zelensky went on to press the United States to increase gas supplies to Europe, saying that cutting off Russian gas through Ukraine would be “one of Russia's biggest defeats.” He also claimed that Moscow was “turning energy into a weapon and engaging in cynical energy blackmail against our partners.”
He added: “The more supply we have on the market from Europe's real partners, the faster we will be able to overcome the last negative consequences of Europe's energy dependence on Russia.”
Before the Ukraine-Russia war, Russia supplied nearly 40% of Europe's natural gas through four pipeline systems, the main of which passed through Ukraine.
Then, after the start of the war, Russia reportedly began cutting off gas supplies from pipelines between the Baltic states and Belarus-Poland and demanded that payments be sent in rubles. The ruble, or “ruble”, is the currency of the Russian Federation.
As a result of the decline in Russian gas in the supply chain, gas prices in Europe have soared, and European countries have scrambled to fill the gap, spending billions of euros importing liquefied natural gas by ship.
Russia's cap share in European Union natural gas supplies plummeted to around 8% in 2023.
In addition, Ukraine will face losses of about $800 million a year in transit fees from Russian gas companies, and Russian gas companies will face losses of about $5 billion in gas sales.
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