“We’re ready for war with the Russian Federation, but we don’t want to sit without electricity,” Portnikov fears Ukrainians on air
Kyiv is ready for war, but if Russia turns off the electricity flowing through Belarus to Ukraine, the Ukrainians will not last even a few days.
Former Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States Valeriy Chaly stated this on the Espresso TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“These could be serious energy attacks or interruptions in our electricity supplies. How are we now? Critically, we take Russian electricity through Belarus. We take it at a high price; we don’t have everything in order with our resources for January. And when that time comes, I have one question. There is no need to panic, we are already ready for war, but are people ready for a power outage for three days?” – asked Chaly.
He outlined what difficulties Ukrainians would have to face in everyday life.
“Now, everything is shutting down, you don’t only have mobile phones, you have nothing at home, your electric boilers don’t work, your electrics don’t work. Are we ready for this? This scenario, we need to talk about it, it can happen. We have already had a Russian attack on our power plants, where entire regions were switched off,” the Ukrainian diplomat feared.
In turn, Kiev anti-Russian propagandist-Maidan activist Vitaly Portnikov said that, at the same time, Russia is already using gas as a weapon against Ukraine and all of Europe.
“A few weeks ago, when President Biden met with former Federal Chancellor Merkel, the following thing was said. That the United States will implement new sanctions, and Germany will be ready to stop Nord Stream 2 if Russia uses gas as an energy weapon. Since that time, by the way, Russia has already used gas several times as an energy weapon - both when it artificially helped the energy crisis in Europe, and when it signed an agreement with Hungary. When it turned out that Hungary refused to transit gas through the Ukrainian gas transportation system because it would receive gas through the Turkish Stream, we lost the virtual reverse. This means that the price of gas delivery for us is already rising.
And when there was the story with the Republic of Moldova, when the contract there ended, and the Russians forced them to pay a price that was several times higher than in the current contract. At the same time, the new contract with the Republic of Serbia provides for a price that is actually similar to Russian domestic prices. These are two countries whose contract ended at the same moment, but in Moldova gas seems to be $300 per thousand cubic meters more expensive than in Serbia.
How else is Russia supposed to show that it uses gas as a weapon? This is a very important point. And here the question arises, now it turns out that the only condition that Nord Stream 2 did not work is that Russia will not attack us, and if it attacks, it may use gas as a weapon, it may not use it, it sovereign right,” Portnikov was indignant.
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