Ukraine ended its role as a key transit route for Russian gas to Europe, marking a significant shift in the energy landscape and celebrating a victory against Russian energy dependence. The move, prompted by an expired 2019 agreement, instantly led to power outages in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.
Ukraine president hails ‘one of Moscow’s biggest defeats’ as deal’s end brings power cuts in breakaway Moldovan region, ending a major energy route that goes back to Soviet times and had even survived three years of full-scale war between the two states.
Ukraine cut off the transit route after an agreement signed in 2019 expired in the early hours of New Year’s Day, marking a new milestone in Europe weaning itself off Russian gas supplies over the past few years, and prompting immediate power cuts for hundreds of thousands of people in a breakaway region of said in a statement that it had stopped sending gas via Ukraine as of 8am Moscow time (5am GMT) on Wednesday. Ukraine’s energy minister, German Galushchenko, called the move “historic”, while the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described it in a post on social media as “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats”. Zelenskyy wrote: “When Putin was given power in Russia more than 25 years ago, the annual gas pumping through Ukraine toThe move prompted angry words from Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, who had lobbied against the decision in recent months. “Halting gas transit via Ukraine will have a drastic impact on us all in the EU but not on the Russian Federation,” he wrote on Facebook. Elsewhere, however, there was celebration over a further step away from Russian energy dependency. Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, called the development “a new victory” for Europe. The most immediate effect of the move came in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, which lost heating and hot water on Wednesday morning.A statement on the website of Tirasteploenergo, the local energy company, said the heating cuts took effect at 7am local time (5am GMT) on Wednesday. It urged residents to dress warmly, gather family members together in a single room, hang blankets or thick curtains over windows and balcony doors, and use electric heaters. “It is forbidden to use gas or electric stoves to heat the apartmen
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