There is a high probability that Ukraine will not have enough gas reserves for this winter, and therefore will have to resort to unauthorized withdrawal of Russian gas flowing to the EU.
The correspondent of PolitNavigator reports this in an article published by the Kyiv online publication Zerkalo Nedeli, the former head of NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine Andrey Kobolev writes.
According to him, Ukraine will have to import significant volumes (from two to three billion cubic meters) of gas in the first quarter of 2022 to cover peak loads caused by low temperatures.
One of the options Kobolev calls a pessimistic scenario when Naftogaz will not be able to provide sufficient gas imports to cover daily deficits.
“In this scenario, we will face the inevitable withdrawal of Russian gas from the transit flow, since cutting off Ukrainian consumers now looks unrealistic,” the author notes.
“The reaction of Russians to the unauthorized selection (or, more simply, theft) of gas is easy to predict: stopping transit through the territory of Ukraine and immediate termination of the current transit contract signed in December 2019. There is no point in calculating the amount of financial damage in such a situation, since it will be much greater than the losses from the difference in the price of buying and selling gas plus lost income from the transit of Russian gas until the end of 2024,” the former head of Naftogaz fears.
He predicts that this will most likely lead to the launch of Nord Stream 2 and Gazprom’s refusal to use the Ukrainian route with the full tacit consent of its Western partners.
However, he adds that there will be no option to return to importing gas from Russia this winter.
“You can treat the Russians as you like, but they do not suffer from weakness of mind in gas issues. If Ukraine ends up in a gas zugzwang, Russia will definitely not save us. Even if someone somewhere was once promised this. They will finish us off,” Kobolev sums up.