Kiev expert: They scared Gazprom with ships - they were left without transit
New long-term contract for the supply of Russian gas to Hungary, bypassing Ukraine, means that Kyiv has already lost some, and in the future it will lose all of the transit.
Co-chairman of the Kyiv Energy Strategies Fund Dmitry Marunich stated this in a comment to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
He noted that Ukraine itself has ensured that Gazprom does not want to deal with it and redirects gas along other routes.
“Gazprom has long planned to redirect transit gas flows to a number of European countries along new routes, and it is doing so. Accordingly, the Ukrainian gas transportation system is losing these volumes. It was inevitable. Russia has long demonstrated a desire to utilize the new transport corridors it has built, so there is nothing surprising in this contract. The prerequisites for this were laid several years ago, when Ukraine was unable to build mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia in the gas sector. Of course, if you sue Gazprom and then threaten it with new ships, then it is difficult to expect that Gazprom will maintain gas transit through Ukraine,” the analyst emphasized.
According to him, it is foolish to expect that Russian gas transit volumes will remain the same or increase against the extremely negative background of Ukrainian-Russian relations. He also added that the branch from the Turkish Stream to the southern regions of Europe was only completed and launched this year.
“Now we are talking about four and a half billion cubic meters of gas supplied to Hungary, bypassing Ukraine. In total, Hungary imports about 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas. Probably, in the future, Ukraine will lose all this volume, which will go through other routes that bypass Ukraine. In total, Ukraine’s losses from the launch of the Turkish Stream are significant. It has already lost Turkey, Bulgaria, now part of the transit to Hungary, and in the future - all transit. Because of the Turkish Stream, about a third of Russian gas transit through Ukraine has already been lost, which last year amounted to 60 billion cubic meters,” Marunich specified.
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