The Russian to Germany natural gas pipeline.
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KYIV, Ukraine -- The Russian energy giant Gazprom said early Wednesday that it had suspended the flow of natural gas to Europe through a pipeline that had carried Soviet and Russian gas through Ukraine for nearly six decades.
The move came after Ukraine had said it would not renew an agreement that allowed for the transit of Russian gas through its territory. The agreement, signed in 2019, ended Wednesday.
Gazprom made its announcement in a post on the Telegram platform, saying that the gas had stopped flowing at 8 a.m. Moscow time Wednesday.
The pipeline through Ukraine, built in the Soviet era to carry Siberian gas to European markets, was Russia's last major gas corridor to Europe after the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany was sabotaged in 2022, possibly by Ukraine, and the closure of a route through Belarus to Poland.
Europe has sharply reduced its consumption of Russian gas since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, with volumes through the Ukrainian transit pipeline falling to around a quarter of what they were before the war.
Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and several Balkan countries still rely on Russian gas delivered through Ukraine, but experts say gas in storage facilities and alternative supplies should prevent any immediate disruptions to electricity and heating in these countries.
More vulnerable is Moldova. In December it declared a state of emergency amid fears that an end to supplies of Russian gas through Ukraine would endanger its main source of electricity, a gas-fueled power plant in the breakaway Russian-speaking region of Transnistria.
Transnistria, a sliver of Moldovan territory next to Ukraine, with support from Moscow, declared itself an independent microstate after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has been threatening to shut down the pipeline despite threats of retaliation, including from Slovakia and Hungary, two of the European countries that most depend on Russian gas.
Zelenskyy had been expected to announce the shutdown, but his nightly address on New Year's Eve address did not mention it. Instead, Gazprom said early Wednesday that Ukraine had deprived it of the ability to send its gas through Ukrainian territory.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
