Brussels, Belgium. Hungary looked set on Monday to block further EU sanctions on Moscow and a 90-billion-euro loan for Kyiv, as attacks on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region killed two people ahead of the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Druzhba pipeline dispute and refinery reliance
Hungary and Slovakia blame Ukraine for delays in restarting the flow of Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline. The two countries have the only remaining refineries in the European Union using Russian oil shipped via Druzhba.
Zelenskiy comments ahead of anniversary
As Kyiv and its allies prepared for Tuesday’s anniversary, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the BBC that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had “already started” World War Three, and said the world must respond with intense pressure.
“The question is how much territory he (Putin) will be able to seize and how to stop him… Russia wants to impose on the world a different way of life and change the lives people have chosen for themselves.”
Russia’s position and Western response
Russia has repeatedly denied claims that it wants a broader conflict with the West and says its “special military operation” in Ukraine is aimed at protecting its own security against what it casts as a hostile and aggressive West. Kyiv and its Western allies say Putin is bent on an imperial-style land grab.
U.S. peace efforts and demands over Donetsk
The U.S. has been trying to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, but progress has proved elusive. Their most recent talks, in Geneva on February 17 and 18, did not produce a breakthrough.
Russia says Ukraine must withdraw from the roughly 20% of the eastern Donetsk region it still controls, a demand Zelenskiy again rejected in his BBC interview, saying it would mean “abandoning hundreds of thousands of our people who live there”.
Hungary’s stance as EU ministers meet
Zelenskiy’s comments came as Hungary vowed to block the European Union’s 20th package of sanctions against Russia and a 90-billion-euro ($106 billion) loan for Ukraine because of the Druzhba pipeline outage.
EU foreign ministers were gathering in Brussels after a row between Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine over the outage in the Druzhba pipeline boiled over at the weekend, threatening to derail the bloc’s latest plans to help Kyiv.
Oil shipments severed since January 27
Shipments of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Druzhba have been severed since January 27, when Kyiv said a Russian drone hit pipeline equipment in Ukraine. Slovakia and Hungary say Ukraine is to blame for the prolonged outage.
How do you think the Druzhba pipeline dispute could affect the European Union’s support measures for Ukraine?