Dhe small town of Nowopskow in eastern Ukraine was occupied by Russian troops at the beginning of March. On the day of the invasion, residents of the city protested against the Russian troops, who opened fire and wounded several people. Since then, hardly any news has leaked out from Nowopskow. Yet there is a facility there that may be of importance for large parts of Europe: the first Ukrainian compressor station of the main leg of the Soyuz pipeline, through which a large part of Russia’s gas exports to the EU flowed until the Ukrainian pipeline operator Gas TSO took over the transport set on Wednesday morning.
The war has thus reached the gas transit system, which has continued to function despite the fighting: Gazprom pumped gas through Ukraine to the EU and transferred the contractually agreed fees to Ukraine. About a third of this gas has so far flowed through Nowopskow. A statement from the Ukrainian pipeline operator Gas TSO on Tuesday evening said that Russian troops made it impossible to continue operating the Novopskov compressor station and the Sochranovka gas metering station on the Russian-Ukrainian border. The occupiers interfered in technical processes and also took gas from the line without authorization, so the safety and stability of the gas flow could no longer be guaranteed.
Russia speaks of “force majeure”
The Russian state-owned company Gazprom, on the other hand, sees no serious reason for the Ukrainian decision. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Russia had received no explanation from the Ukrainians as to what “force majeure” prevented them from fulfilling the transit treaties. Gazprom said the gas diversion proposed by the Ukrainians via the Suja gas metering station in the Sumy region of northern Ukraine was technically impossible. The Ukrainians counter that this is exactly what happened during repairs in Nowopskow in autumn 2020. The difference between the two routes that is probably decisive for both sides: In the Sumy region, the border crossing of the pipeline is again under Ukrainian control since the Russian troops withdrew from there at the beginning of April.
On Wednesday, according to Ukrainian sources, the Russian occupiers took the next blow in this gas dispute: They closed the valves of a pipeline running inside Ukraine that was used to supply the population. This means that the residents of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions are cut off from the gas supply. However, this had already collapsed in the heavily contested parts of the Luhansk region. The civilian head of administration in Luhansk, Serhiy Hajdaj, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday evening that there was no gas, electricity, water or mobile phone connections in the settlements in the region still held by Ukraine. The days before, he had repeatedly reported on gas pipelines hit by Russian shelling.
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