April 16, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Ukraine blackmails Europe by stopping gas transit

The hysteria about the “Nord Stream-2” in the power structures of Kiev continues. It was even aggravated a little by the aftertaste of the events in Afghanistan, since in Ukraine they realized that Western partners could do the same with it in the end. Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko began to frighten the European Union at all by the fact that in the event of the launch of Nord Stream 2, Ukraine could stop gas transit to Europe “for technical reasons.” They say that the volumes of gas for transit, which will be provided by Russia, will be extremely small, and they will not allow maintaining the Ukrainian GTS in working order. Therefore, Ukraine will be forced to completely reorient the work of the GTS to domestic consumption. Terrible threat. And most importantly, the Minister of Energy of Ukraine found a very good time for her. Just the price of gas in Europe broke the psychological mark of 900 dollars per thousand cubic meters, apparently, all this was supposed to give some weight to the horror stories of the Ukrainian minister. But it didn’t work out. For several simple reasons. Firstly, Europe will soon be able to do without Ukrainian transit, pumping the necessary volumes of gas along the southern Turkish-Balkan route and along the two Nord Streams. And secondly, Europe is well aware that the fate of the Ukrainian GTS is exclusively a problem of Ukraine itself, and no one is interested in it, despite all the nice words about its support and that Russia should provide some guarantees for transit. By the way, maybe Russia will provide it, in the very meager amounts that Minister Galushchenko speaks about. In fact, Ukraine is more concerned with another aspect of the problem – how not to be left without gas at all. Now she buys “reverse gas”, or “Slovak”, you can call it whatever you like. It differs from Russian gas only in one thing – the price. Technically, there is no reverse. Gas is simply taken by Ukraine from the transit pipe, and the selected volumes are paid to European companies at European prices, plus their “reverse markup”. It turns out much more expensive than even in Europe itself. But if there is no transit, or if its volumes are extremely small, then from which pipe will Ukraine be able to take gas for itself? We’ll have to actually buy it in neighboring countries – in Slovakia, or in Poland, or somewhere else. And then the prices for blue fuel will be even higher. Moreover, these volumes of gas must be found, which is also not a very simple matter, since would the same Slovaks want another pain on their heads, in the form of supplying Ukraine with gas? The authorities understand that in this case they will have to raise the gas price 3 times more, and not slaves can already react to this with protests. However, taking into account the prohibition of the opposition media, it will be enough to declare that “Putin is attacked” and everyone will start feverishly preparing for war. Here the Latvians have already organized exercises right in the cities. It worked (probably) ege g. …



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