BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Russian crude oil flows to Hungary were halted after Ukraine attacked a transformer station on the Druzhba pipeline, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.
Unlike most other EU countries, Hungary has kept up its reliance on Russian energy since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. It imports most of its crude via the Druzhba pipeline, which runs through Belarus and Ukraine to Hungary and also Slovakia.
Szijjarto wrote on Facebook that he had talked to Russian Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin who told him that experts were working to restore the transformer station, but it was unclear when deliveries would resume.
“This latest strike against our energy security is outrageous and unacceptable,” Szijjarto wrote. He did not say when or where the attack took place.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha neither confirmed nor denied the account of the attack, but wrote on X that Hungary “can now send complaints” to Moscow, not Kyiv.
“It is Russia, not Ukraine, who began this war and refuses to end it. Hungary has been told for years that Moscow is an unreliable partner. Despite this, Hungary has made every effort to maintain its reliance on Russia,” Sybiha wrote.
Ukraine’s defence ministry and armed forces, and Hungarian oil company MOL, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. There was also no immediate comment from Slovakia’s Slovnaft refinery, which receives Russian crude through the same pipeline.
Last year, Szijjarto said that the Druzhba pipeline would remain Hungary’s primary route for crude oil imports.
Monday’s suspension of oil deliveries comes after a temporary halt last week, when Ukraine’s military said on August 13 that its drones hit the Uniecha oil pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region.
(Reporting by Anita Komuves; Additional reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Vera Dvorakova in Gdansk; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
