Outcomes of the year on the gas market: Ukrainian transit – cannot be stopped, cannot be continued

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, gave an interview to RIA Novosti about the future of the European gas market if Russian gas transit through Ukraine is stopped or continued.

According to Belogoryev, there is no economic sense for Russia in maintaining transit in conditions of unstable and falling gas demand in Europe. For the Ukrainian authorities, it is unacceptable for domestic political reasons, although it was they who insisted in 2019 on concluding a long-term contract, the expert emphasizes. Gas supplies can also be carried out on the basis of short–term capacity reservations - for a month or even a day in advance, he recalls.

Maintaining supplies in 2025 at the level of 2024 is possible only if "political and general economic relations between Russia and the EU significantly warm up," Belogoryev adds. This will make it possible to partially restore Russian gas supplies to Italy, the Czech Republic and Germany, the expert said.

"But still, it seems to me that reason will prevail, and at the very end of the old year or in the first months of the new year, some kind of solution will be found. Most likely, some kind of half-hearted, aimed primarily at gas supply to Moldova and Slovakia," Belogoryev concludes.