BUDAPEST (Reuters) – A row over the end of Russian gas flows via Ukraine has intensified as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban threatened to block the next rollover of EU sanctions against Russia unless Brussels helps to achieve a restart of supply.
Russian gas exports via Soviet-era pipelines running through Ukraine stopped on Jan. 1 after Ukraine declined to renew a transit agreement with Russia.
Slovakia and Hungary have been pressing the EU to step in to get gas flows restored.
Although Hungary’s supply of Russian gas comes via the TurkStream pipeline through Turkey, not via Ukraine, Orban maintains that the Ukraine route is important to Hungary.
Orban told state radio on Friday that Ukraine’s move to halt Russian gas transit to Central Europe and the resulting rise in energy prices was “unacceptable”.
Orban also said that if gas flows did not restart, Hungary would veto the next rollover of the sanctions the European Union has imposed on Russia over the war, due in around six months.
“Among other things, the Commission has promised to sort out the Ukrainians restarting Russian gas transit,” Orban said. “If the Commission does not deliver on what we agreed on, then sanctions will be scrapped.”
The EU on Monday renewed the wide-ranging sanctions, after Hungary stopped holding up the move in return for a declaration on energy security.
The Commission was not immediately available to comment on Orban’s remarks.
The Commission has said it will continue discussions with Ukraine on gas supplies to Europe, and involve Hungary and Slovakia. It has long maintained that Europe does not need the gas coming via Ukraine.
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was due to meet with the European Commission on Thursday but technical issues prevented his plane landing.
Slovakia has arranged alternative gas supply but Fico says it will have a problem refilling storage for next year’s consumption, and is losing money in transit fees.
Fico has also threatened to cut emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine, reduce aid for its refugees in Slovakia or use its veto on EU decisions relating to Ukraine.
“If we see [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy is deceiving us, I will take reciprocal action when it comes to the next [decision on] measures such as financial aid,” Fico wrote on Facebook.
Slovakia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it had summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to protest against comments by Ukraine’s foreign ministry that Fico had been “poisoned by Russian propaganda”.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; additional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague and Kate Abnett in Brussels; writing by Nina Chestney; editing by Jason Neely and Kevin Liffey)
