Budapest, Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Hungary will gradually stop sending natural gas to Ukraine until crude oil flows through the Druzhba pipeline resume, escalating a standoff with Kyiv over disrupted energy supplies.
Dispute over Druzhba pipeline outage
Hungary and Slovakia, whose leaders are outliers in the EU for maintaining relations with Moscow, blamed Kyiv for an outage on the Druzhba oil pipeline that supplies their refineries with Russian crude pumped through Ukraine.
Kyiv said the pipeline was damaged by a Russian drone attack in late January and that repairs are being carried out as quickly as possible.
Orban announces gradual halt to gas deliveries
“We are gradually halting gas deliveries from Hungary to Ukraine, and will store the gas that remains with us in Hungary,” Orban said in a video posted on Facebook.
Ukraine says imports continuing and cites economic impact
Data on Hungarian pipeline operator FGSZ’s website showed gas shipments were continuing to Ukraine on Wednesday morning.
“As of now, this import has not been stopped,” Heorhii Tykhy, spokesperson for Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs, told journalists.
“If Prime Minister Orban still decides to stop it, we believe that the only consequence will be to deprive the Hungarian economy and the Hungarians of more than $1 billion, which Hungary received for example last year,” Tykhy said.
Data from Ukraine’s gas transmission system operator showed Ukraine would receive 8.3 mcm of gas from Hungary on Wednesday, the same volume as on Tuesday. Ukraine plans to import a total of 25 mcm of gas from Eastern Europe on Wednesday.
How could a halt in gas deliveries from Hungary affect Ukraine’s planned gas imports from Eastern Europe?