Ukraine has restricted for the first time since it was invaded by Russia 77 days ago the flow of natural gas that Vladimir Putin’s country sells to Europe through pipelines on its territory.
The move has taken Western analysts by surprise, who seek to amplify as much news as possible that seem favorable to the Kiev government in its fight against the Russians, such as an offensive in the northeast of the country that recaptured some villages on Wednesday (11).
The cut has two basic meanings: first, that President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to put even more pressure on EU (European Union) members who are reluctant to suspend the purchase of Russian gas and oil, which account for about 40% of the bloc’s energy demands. The EU has discussed such cuts and has called for an end to imports of oil and oil products, but there is resistance, particularly from Hungary’s Putin ally Viktor Orbán.
The partial gas cut was made at the Sokhranovka transit point owned by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas giant. Ukrainian operator TSO said there was no security on that branch as it passed through the Russian rebel areas of Lugansk, although the flow had been constant since the beginning of the war. She suggested diverting the flow to the branch that leaves the Russian city of Sudja, further north.
With the measure, there was a 25% drop in gas shipments to Europe, which made the price of the product fluctuate a little. But it will have more severe impacts if it continues — the other hydrocarbon routes pass through Belarus and under the Baltic Sea, via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, which links Russia to Germany.
The second branch of Nord Stream, which opened last year, was never used due to rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine and, later, the war. He is considered the biggest strategic mistake of Angela Merkel’s years in power in Germany, for tying the energy future of Europe’s biggest economy to an unreliable ally.
Moscow says it handles the matter professionally, saying it will keep its hydrocarbon sales in contracts, having only forced countries to pay in rubles to appreciate their currency in the crisis – but it has already cut off the flow to Poland and Bulgaria, opponents who refused to do that. The harsh sanctions that the Russians have been imposed do not prevent around €1 billion (R$5.4 billion) from being paid daily to the Kremlin in exchange for the products by the Europeans.
Zelensky has said more than once that the West needs to stop funding the Russian war effort indirectly, while he was promised $40 billion in military and economic aid from the United States alone.
In this way, the measure may just be a warning or a sign of despair on the part of Kiev. The Russian offensive in the east of the country, aimed at snapping up perhaps the remaining 20% of the Russian-speaking Donbass region and the south of the country, has advanced with difficulty — but progress.
Ukrainians announced with great fanfare on Wednesday that they had taken over villages around Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, northwest of Donbass. But the move does not interfere with Russian action aimed at cornering the bulk of Kiev’s forces in the center of Ukraine’s remaining region.
Whether Vladimir Putin’s forces will have the energy and manpower for the undertaking is up for debate even in Russia. The steady stream of Western weapons best suited for this type of combat, as opposed to moving light, well-armed infantry against fixed columns of Russian tanks from the first stage of the conflict, may also take its toll.
This is reflected in the rhetoric of Zelensky, who celebrated the advances in a video but said “we must not create excessive moral pressure [sobre a tropa]where victories are expected every week or even every day”.
The Russians seem to act according to a timetable of their own, which is elusive. This Wednesday, for example, one of the interveners appointed by Moscow for the Kherson region, taken from the Ukrainians in the south of the country, announced that he intends to make a formal request for annexation to the Kremlin.
Home to 1 million people before the war, Kherson was one of Putin’s first targets. Russian forces from Crimea, annexed in 2014 and immediately south of the province, seized the eponymous capital as the first major city occupied by Moscow in the invasion.
By the end of the year, said deputy head of the civil-military administration Kirill Stemousov, the region will be part of the Russian Federation. This will likely occur with the holding of a plebiscite. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov gave the password saying that if “there is a legal basis”, annexation will take place.
This happened in Crimea, with the difference that the peninsula is historically a Russian area, with most of its inhabitants considering themselves to be ethnic Russians. Kherson is more diverse, and the distant 2001 census said 14% of its population was Russian-speaking. Other estimates speak of 50%.
The protests of residents of the capital throughout the occupation so far, however, show that the integration process will be far from simple. But it is ongoing: the ruble has already been adopted as the official currency and, as in the neighboring province of Zaporijia, even the road signs are already in Russian.
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