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Russia claims Ukraine tried to attack TurkStream pipeline infrastructure

Russia said on Monday it had downed nine Ukrainian drones that it claimed had tried over the weekend to attack part of the infrastructure of the TurkStream gas pipeline, through which Russian gas flows to Türkiye and Europe.

The attack was aimed against a compressor station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said, but the facility was working normally, and there were no casualties.

Kremlin accused Ukraine of trying to “cut off gas supplies to European countries.” There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

TurkStream and Blue Stream, which run under the Black Sea to Türkiye, are Russia’s last routes for supplying pipeline gas to Europe. At the beginning of this year, Ukraine refused to renew a five-year transit deal that had allowed Russia to keep pumping gas across its territory despite the war between the two neighbors.

The TurkStream pipeline runs over 930 kilometers (578 miles) through the Black Sea and comes ashore in the Thrace region of Türkiye.

The site is across from the annexed peninsula of Crimea – heavily targeted by Kyiv throughout the three-year conflict.

The Russian statement said falling fragments from one drone had caused minor damage to the building and equipment of a gas metering station at the compressor, but emergency teams had quickly repaired it.

The gas pipeline begins at the Russkaya (Russian) compressor station outside the city of Anapa and runs to Kıyıköy in the European part of Türkiye and then on to the European Union. Compressor stations are used to stabilize the pressure and flow rate of gas.

The pipeline was launched by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in January 2020.

The allegation comes amid an escalating energy row between Moscow and Kyiv, almost three years after Russia launched its full-scale military offensive.

Kyiv halted the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine on Jan. 1 – ending decades of energy cooperation that had brought billions of dollars to both countries – in a bid to cut off revenue for Moscow’s army.

EU member Hungary receives Russian gas via the TurkStream route. Austria and Slovakia had contracts for Russian gas via the Ukrainian transit route that has been canceled, with both countries saying they had secured alternative supplies.

‘Destabilizing’

The United States last week rolled out new sanctions on Russia’s oil sector, which the Kremlin on Monday said were aimed at “destabilizing” the world energy market.

The U.S. and Britain on Friday announced sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, including oil giant Gazprom Neft and 180 ships it says are part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet,” just days before outgoing President Joe Biden leaves office.

“Such decisions cannot but lead to a certain destabilization of the global energy market,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The 27-member EU has been reducing its dependence on Russian gas since Moscow launched its full-scale military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.

Despite imports via pipeline having fallen, several European countries have increased their purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is transported by sea.

Seeking upper-hand

Russia also used to ship gas to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea.

Both lines were blown up in a sabotage attack in 2022, which also hit one of the two Nord Stream 2 lines – a second undersea pipeline between Russia and Germany that was never put into operation.

Ukraine’s halt of gas transit has triggered a diplomatic row with Slovakia, which is facing higher costs to secure alternative gas supplies.

A delegation from the country was in Moscow on Monday, a day after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico of lying and arrogance over the transit dispute.

On the battlefield, Russia claimed its forces had captured the village of Pishchane, southwest of the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, which Moscow is pressing to capture.

Both sides are looking to secure the upper hand in the fighting ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump returning to office next week.

The Kremlin on Monday said there were no “substantive preparations” for a meeting between Trump and Putin, a week after the American president-elect said such a meeting was being arranged.

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