Russia’s Gas Supply to Europe Halted after Ukraine Transit Deal Expires

The Washington Post / David L. Stern, Francesca Ebel, Chico Harlan

13:48 JST, January 2, 2025

MUKACHEVO, Ukraine – The flow of natural gas from Russia to Europe was suspended Wednesday after Ukraine said it would not renew a deal allowing Russian gas to transit its territory, ending an energy supply route that dates back some 60 years.

In a statement posted to Telegram, Russian energy company Gazprom said it was no longer sending gas because of the expiration of the agreement Wednesday.

“Due to the repeated and explicit refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements, Gazprom was deprived of the technical and legal ability to supply gas for transit through the territory of Ukraine from January 1, 2025. Since 8:00 Moscow time, Russian gas has not been supplied for its transportation through the territory of Ukraine,” it said in the statement.

Despite the ongoing Russian invasion, which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country since 2022, Ukraine had continued to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors – generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.

Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko confirmed in a statement Wednesday that Russian gas had ceased flowing through Ukraine.

“This is a historic event. Russia is losing its markets, it will suffer financial losses. Europe has already made the decision to abandon Russian gas,” he said Wednesday on Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the gas stoppage “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats,” in a post to X on Wednesday.

European Union leaders insist they can cope without the gas transiting via Ukraine, saying that the bloc has worked steadily over the past three years to cut its dependence on Russian gas, slashing imports fourfold. According to the Brussels think tank Bruegel, 5 percent of Europe’s gas imports came through Ukraine, based on data from the first eight months of 2024.

In the run-up to Wednesday’s cutoff, European energy officials had been coordinating with the nations most dependent on Russian gas – mostly those in Central and Eastern Europe.

In a recent report, the European Commission described the bloc’s gas system as “resilient and flexible” and said that all member countries can now access liquefied natural gas imported from elsewhere.

“The European Union is well-prepared to face the end of gas transit via Ukraine,” the report said. The gas “transiting via Ukraine can be fully replaced by LNG and non-Russian pipeline imports via alternative routes.”

Ukraine was once the main route for Russian gas to Europe. However, the opening of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline project in 2011, which sent Russian gas directly to Germany, greatly reduced Ukraine’s role.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline – which was completed but never entered service when Germany halted its certification in February 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – could have removed the need for Ukraine’s pipeline system entirely.

In 2014, Kyiv’s forces began fighting Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. But officials in Kyiv insisted that Ukraine needed to preserve its leverage over Moscow as a middleman for Russian gas for security reasons – and to keep earning billions of dollars from transit fees.

In 2019, the two sides reached a deal to continue the transit of Russian gas until the end of 2024. Moscow was obligated to pump some 40 billion cubic meters of gas annually through Ukraine’s gas transit system or pay Kyiv the difference if it fell short. In 2022, Moscow also sent about 300,000 barrels of oil per day through the Druzhba – or “Friendship” – pipeline, part of which crosses Ukraine.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian officials called on their European allies to greatly reduce and eventually cut off all gas imports from Russia – a major revenue source for Moscow that was helping fund its war machine.

Nevertheless, Russian oil and gas continued to cross Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian officials said they needed to uphold their contractual obligations, especially to show the Europeans that they were reliable business partners.

In September 2022, an explosion damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines but left one branch of Nord Stream 2 still operational. The attack was coordinated by a Ukrainian military officer, The Washington Post reported. Ukraine had long complained that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian pipes – and give Russia a stranglehold over European gas supplies.

Last year, Ukrainian officials made clear that they would not renew the transit contract with Russia – causing friction with some of Ukraine’s neighbors that receive discounted Russian gas through the pipeline and had pushed for an extension of the deal.

On Wednesday, authorities in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria said they were cutting off heating and hot water, after Russia’s Gazprom stopped supplying Moldova with gas crossing Ukraine. However, on Saturday, Gazprom also said it would be halting gas supplies on Jan. 1 over hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid debts, a claim that Moldovan officials reject.

In particular, tensions have spiked between Ukraine and Slovakia. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico last month paid a surprise visit to Moscow to discuss gas deliveries with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The next day, Zelensky criticized Fico for the visit and his reluctance to end his country’s dependency on Russian gas, calling it a “big security issue” for Europe.

On Friday, in response, Fico posted a video on Facebook in which he threatened to cut off emergency electrical supplies to Ukraine, which the country buys as it experiences power cuts due to Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine’s energy system.

“After January 1, we will assess the situation and the possibilities of reciprocal measures against Ukraine,” Fico said.

Zelensky responded with a statement on Telegram accusing Fico of opening “a second energy front against Ukraine, at the expense of the interests of the people of Slovakia,” on the orders of Putin – accusations rejected by Slovakia’s Foreign Ministry.

Now, despite Fico’s efforts, Russian gas has stopped traversing Ukraine.

“The Russian gas monster is in convulsions,” Victoria Voytsitska, a civil society leader and former parliament deputy who lobbied Ukrainian and European officials to close off the transit, wrote on Facebook. But Moscow was trying to mobilize “all its levers of influence,” including European politicians, to get it to resume, she wrote.

“This gas has been an instrument of the Kremlin’s economic and political influence on Europe for decades,” Voytsitska added. “For the past 10 years, it has provided the most liquid channel for financing the Russian military machine.”