Ukraine will stop the transit of Russian gas to Europe on 1 January 2025, Mykhailo Podolyak, senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Friday.
Ukraine would be willing to transit gas from other countries, such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, though this would require the “appropriate logistics”, where “Ukraine’s transit role would be defined separately”, Podolyak said in an interview with Ukrainian news outlet Noviny Live.
While Podolyak initially said that Ukraine would also stop transiting Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline from 1 January 2025, he later walked back his statement, saying that Ukraine would “continue to fulfil its contractual obligations” on the transit of oil until the end of 2029.
Oleksiy Chernyshov, the head of Ukraine’s national oil and gas company Naftogaz, said in October that Ukraine would not extend the current contract with Russia’s energy giant Gazprom signed in 2019. He explained that Naftogaz decided not to terminate the contract prematurely because of EU countries’ need for Russian gas, asserting that the decision had nothing to do with potential lawsuits from Gazprom.
The contract between Naftogaz and Gazprom expires on 31 December. According to the contract, Russia has to export 225 billion cubic metres of gas within five years and pay Ukraine for transit.