Representative image showing a gas pipeline.
Credit: iStock Photo
Moscow: Russia is ready to continue gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine after the current transit agreement expires at the end of 2024, Russian state news agencies reported on Wednesday, citing Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.
Future gas transit depends on whether Ukraine wants to continue the arrangement or not, he was quoted as saying.
A five-year deal on Russian gas transit via Ukraine to Europe, the only remaining trade and political agreement between warring Moscow and Kyiv, expires after Dec 31 2024.
Russian gas supplies to Europe, once a key source of revenue for Moscow, have plummeted following the Kremlin's decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb 24 2022.
"Transit through its territory depends on Ukraine. They have their own established rules. It depends on their desire. Russia is ready to supply," Novak was quoted as saying by the RIA state news agency.
Ukraine has said it does not plan to prolong the five-year deal with Russian pipeline gas exporting monopoly Gazprom or to sign another one.
Last month, an Azeri presidential advisor told Reuters that the European Union and Ukraine had asked Azerbaijan to facilitate discussions with Russia on the gas transit deal.
While the EU has cut most of its Russian gas imports, some central European countries still depend on gas from Russia via the pipeline that crosses Ukraine. Austria still receives most of its gas through this route.
Russia currently exports its natural gas to Europe via only two routes: through a Soviet-built pipeline which runs through Ukraine and via the TurkStream pipeline to Turkey which runs along the bed of the Black Sea.
Russia supplied a total of around 63.8 bcm of gas to Europe by various routes in 2022, according to Gazprom data and Reuters calculations. That volume decreased, by 55.6 per cent, to 28.3 bcm last year.
At their peak in 2018-2019, annual flows to the European region reached between 175 bcm and 180 bcm.