Ukraine Won’t Unblock Russian Oil Transit

There is now an open trade war between Ukraine, which has finally blocked the transit of Russian oil through its territory, on the one hand, and Hungary and Slovakia, which now risk a large-scale energy crisis, on the other. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said that “the sanctions imposed by the National Security Council of Ukraine against the Russian oil company Lukoil and its exports, which have so far traveled through Ukraine, are not under discussion.” From the Ukrainian prime minister’s point of view, stopping the transit of Russian oil “does not pose a threat to the energy security of Hungary, Slovakia, and Europe as a whole.” Shmygal emphasized that “there is a full understanding of the European Union in this matter.”

It didn’t take long for Hungary and Slovakia to react extremely negatively. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has called on the European Commission to clarify whether it really asked Ukraine to stop the transit of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. “The European Commission and its president Ursula von der Leyen should come clean immediately: was it Brussels that asked Kiev to suspend oil transit? And if the answer is no, why hasn’t the European Commission taken any initiative for more than a week?” Szijjarto wondered, hypothesizing that the West’s “retaliation measures” are behind the incident for the independent position and “peacekeeping missions” in Kiev, Moscow, and Beijing by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as well as for Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s firm “no” to sending military aid to Ukraine.

“Brussels is silent despite the threat to the energy security of the two member states, despite the clear violation of the EU-Ukraine association agreement,” emphasized Szijjarto, according to whom “either the EU Commission is so weak that it is unable to defend the fundamental interests of the two member states against the candidate state, or the whole issue originated not in Kiev, but in Brussels. Not by the Ukrainian government, but by the European Commission, which wanted to blackmail the two countries that support peace and refuse to supply arms to Ukraine.”

In his turn, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who shares Budapest’s position on ways of peace in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, said that “the refinery of the Slovak company Slovnaft will stop supplying diesel fuel to Ukraine” if the latter does not immediately agree to the resumption of Russian oil transit towards Slovakia.” The Slovnaft refinery, whose diesel fuel is used by the Kiev army to fuel tanks and armored vehicles, covers a tenth of Ukraine’s consumption.

Cracks in intra-EU relations caused by Ukraine, which also wants to join NATO, cannot but worry Italy. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto urged European structures to avoid hasty steps, especially regarding Kiev’s partnership with NATO. “We cannot afford to take too many steps forward too quickly in the partnership between Ukraine and NATO,” Crosetto said during a briefing in the Italian parliament on the day (August 1) that Kiev received its first shipment of US F-16 fighter-bombers. Bloomberg Economic Information Agency writes, citing an anonymous source, that “Kiev has received delivery of several airplanes” whose origin is unclear. In 2023, a group of NATO countries including Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden pledged to supply Ukraine with dozens of F-16s to deal with absolute air superiority by the Russian military.

Moscow reacted calmly to the news: “The wreckage of F-16s will soon be found in the Russian capital, along with the wreckage of American Abrams tanks and German Leopards,” a Kremlin spokesman said.