EU declares its readiness to completely abandon Russian gas
Photo: Kadri Simson (Getty Images)
The share of Russian gas in the EU's imports has fallen sharply since Russia's war against Ukraine. The EU is ready to completely abandon supplies from Moscow, according to European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson.
According to her, the share of Russian gas in EU imports decreased from 45% in 2021 to 18% by June 2024, while imports from reliable partners such as Norway and the United States increased.
"We are no longer at the mercy of Putin’s pipelines, and we keep standing by our Ukrainian partners as winter approaches," she says.
According to Simson, the EU remains fully committed to completing the phase-out of Russian gas, which can be done without jeopardizing the energy security of Europe's supply.
She says that as a first step, they were preparing, together with member states, to terminate the agreement on gas transit through Ukraine. She adds that they had been working on this for several months and had started preparations two years ago, noting that the EU was ready to live without Russian gas coming through the Ukrainian transit route.
The 2024 State of the Energy Community report states that energy prices are more stable and remain well below the peak levels of the 2022 energy crisis.
At the same time, the EU reached its 90 percent winter gas storage target on August 19, 2024, well ahead of the November 1 deadline.
End of transit
The contract for the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine expires at the end of 2024 and Kyiv will not extend it.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in July that Kyiv was negotiating gas supplies from Azerbaijan to the EU. An agreement to replace Russian gas with Azerbaijani supplies is ‘one of the proposals’ currently being discussed, Zelenskyy said at the time.
Read more about possible deliveries after 2024 in RBC-Ukraine's article.
