“Gazprom’s announcement this afternoon that it is re-closing Nord Stream 1 under false pretenses further confirms its credibility as a supplier,” EC spokesman Eric Maymer said via the social network Twitter.
“This is a testament to the cynicism of Russia, which prefers burning gas to fulfilling agreements,” he added.
Russian group Gazprom announced today that the Nord Stream pipeline will be shut down “permanently” to repair a turbine after three days of downtime for maintenance.
In a statement, Gazprom indicated that it had discovered “oil leaks” in the turbine during this maintenance process and until it was fixed, gas supply would be “completely suspended”.
Russia was due to resume pipeline gas supplies on Saturday after a three-day disruption.
Today, the Kremlin indicated that the operation of the gas pipeline is “threatened” by a shortage of spare parts due to economic sanctions imposed on Moscow after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
Gazprom has been cutting gas supplies via Nord Stream in recent months, and in July it already carried out maintenance work for 10 days before resuming supplies on a more limited scale.
In the context of the war in Ukraine, energy is at the center of a tug-of-war between Moscow and the West, which it accuses of using Russia as “a weapon”.
This week, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller noted that it is now impossible to repair the Nord Stream turbines at a specialized factory because of Western sanctions.
Earlier, Moscow had already argued that due to Western sanctions, the technical equipment of the pipeline could not be renewed, and the repaired turbines could not be returned to Russia without guarantees that they were not under the sanctions regime.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24 has already displaced more than 13 million people — more than six million internally displaced people and more than seven million to neighboring countries — according to the latest UN data, which ranks it. Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
The Russian invasion — justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as the need to “denazify” and militarize Ukraine for Russia’s security — was condemned by the generality of the international community, which responded by sending arms to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia. Obstacles.
The UN said 5,663 civilians had been confirmed killed and 8,055 wounded since the start of the war, which entered its 191st day today, stressing that the figure was much lower than the actual number.
