Some headlines that were out earlier today, that I’ve only just seen, has Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk saying that they will consider banning transit of all kinds of resources through Ukraine from Russia, when asked if gas bans are on their sanction list.
Russia is already shifting some of the 14m tons of oil they planned to ship through Ukraine. They have already moving 8m tons through the Czech Republic and Slovakia and 6m though Hungary.
The Ukrainians will be treading on thin ice if they do ban gas supply transit but the PM’s comments don’t highlight gas in particular so it may not be as inflammatory as it seems. Europe won’t be happy that energy supplies are coming up in conversation at all and considering Ukraine is relying on reverse flows for their needs they’ll be shooting themselves in the foot and making life much harder for themselves.
It’s a story to monitor and I’ll assume we’ll hear from some European mouthpiece responding sometime soon.
