Out in the cold

Europe’s dependence on Russian energy had already drastically reduced since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, so the gesture is mostly symbolic. But it doesn’t make the decision less important or mean there are no consequences for the remaining Gazprom customers in Europe.

Russia will continue to supply some gas via the Turkstream pipeline across the Black Sea — mostly to Serbia and Hungary. But the loss of transit connections through Ukraine has dealt another major blow to Gazprom on top of the closure of the Yamal-Europe pipeline via Belarus and the cancelling of Nord Stream 2 in 2022.

Gazprom posted its first operating loss since 1999 last year and is now set to lose another €5–6 billion. This will further reduce the company’s tax contributions to the Russian budget. Only a few years ago Russia supplied around 41% of the EU’s energy needs. Today it only provides about 8%.

It has found new customers in Asia, but mostly for oil. Significant parts of its gas infrastructure are now dormant. And the reorientation of its gas export markets towards Asia is too slow and too costly to manage while it is waging war against Ukraine.

Weaning itself off Russian gas quickly — by finding new suppliers, especially of liquified natural gas (LNG), in the US and Norway — the EU has shown a surprising ability to muster the required political will and agility to see through the consequences.

The EU has also increased its energy resilience, prices have dropped well below their inflationary highs in 2022 and gas storage tanks across Europe are now more than 90% full. So there is no question that Brussels will be able to manage the fallout from the end of gas supplies through Ukraine.

This is also made easier by the fact that only three countries, until recently, still depended on Russian supplies. Austria stopped receiving gas in November after a contractual dispute with Gazprom, but had plans in place that were swiftly and effectively enacted, minimising any disruption.

Hungary receives its supplies primarily via the Turkstream pipeline and can make up for shortfalls that way. It can also buy more LNG from Croatia, where the EU has built a large new terminal to process imports primarily from the US.

For Slovakia, too, the energy risks are low. The country is well integrated into the EU energy network and has ready alternatives for the supply of electricity and gas. In any case, only about one-third of the approximately 12 billion cubic metres of Russian gas that the country received annually were for its own domestic consumption. The remainder was sold within the EU at a profit.

The country’s Russia-friendly prime minister, Robert Fico, tried hard to get the transit deal renewed. This included making unfounded claims of an energy crisis in Europe, threatening to punish Ukraine for ending the transit deal, and visiting Moscow in December — rare for an EU head of government. But all to no avail.

If nothing else, with the end of gas transits through Ukraine, the days when Putin could easily weaponise energy supplies against EU members are now over. Yet the end of Russian gas transits through Ukraine is not victimless.

Moldova has been badly affected. And in government-controlled areas of the country, a 60-day energy state of emergency introduced in December has imposed significant restrictions on domestic consumption.

Moldova’s government seems confident that the country can survive the winter. But its state of preparedness for the crisis — which was clearly coming since Ukraine announced in the summer of 2023 that it would not renew its transit contract with Russia — was poor, leading to the dismissal of its energy minister and head of the main state energy company in November.

This does not reflect well on the country’s pro-European government, which faces parliamentary elections later this year, while still recovering from a deeply polarising referendum on future EU membership and presidential election in October, both of which were marred by massive Russian vote-buying and misinformation campaigns.

Perhaps an even more significant problem is the far more precarious situation in the breakaway region of Transnistria. Some 300,000 people there were completely dependent on Russian gas delivered through Ukraine, and have had no heating or hot water since the start of the year. The region’s main electricity plant has switched from gas to coal, but only has coal supplies for about 50 days.

Apart from the minimal domestic needs of the population, Transnistria’s economic model was entirely predicated on the availability of essentially free Russian gas. With this now no longer available, there is a risk of an economic and humanitarian crisis quickly spinning out of control.

This, in turn, poses major political and security risks for Moldova. Already buckling under its own energy crisis and economic problems, Moldova has very little flexibility to provide aid to Transnistria or cope with large numbers of refugees.

While this may create an opportune moment for Chișinău to force the issue of reunification, this would be an extraordinarily risky gamble for Moldova. Transnistria is still home to around 1,500 Russian troops who were deployed there as “peacekeepers” to guard a Soviet-era munitions storage facility after a brief armed conflict in the early 1990s. Having been indoctrinated by Russian and separatist propaganda for more than three decades, Transnistria’s population would also be likely to dilute the pro-European vote if reintegrated back into Moldovan society.

None of this means that Moldova will face violent upheaval or that Russia will somehow be able to manipulate the situation in a way that a second front could emerge in Ukraine’s back. In the long term, Russia, with its last significant bit of leverage in the energy war against Europe now gone, is the biggest loser from the end of gas transits through Ukraine.