Russian gas has stopped flowing to EU states via Ukraine after a five-year deal expired, marking the end of a decades-long arrangement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier that his country would not allow Russia to “earn additional billions on our blood” and had given the EU a year to prepare.
The European Commission said the continent’s gas system was “resilient and flexible” and that it could cope with the change. Slovakia, however, was facing supply deficits and Moldova, which is not in the EU, is already suffering shortages.
Russia can still send gas to Hungary, Turkey and Serbia through the TurkStream pipeline across the Black Sea.
Russian company Gazprom confirmed that gas exports via Ukraine to Europe stopped on Wednesday.
Moscow has transported gas to Europe through Ukraine since 1991.
While immediate effects are light, the strategic and symbolic impact for the whole of Europe is enormous.
Russia has lost an important market, but its president, Vladimir Putin, says EU countries will suffer most.
The EU has significantly reduced imports of gas from Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but a number of eastern member states still depend largely on the supplies, making Russia about €5bn ($5.2bn; £4.2bn) a year.
Russian gas was less than 10% of the EU’s gas imports in 2023, according to the bloc. That figure was 40% in 2021.
But several EU members, including Slovakia and Austria, continued to import significant amounts of gas from Russia.
Austria’s energy regulator said that it did not forecast any disruption as it had diversified sources and built up reserves.
But the end of the transit deal has already caused serious tensions with Slovakia, which is now the main entry point of Russian gas into the EU and earned transit fees from piping the gas on to Austria, Hungary, and Italy.
