Oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia from Russian oil giant Lukoil have come to a halt due to Ukrainian sanctions, media reported Thursday.
Restrictions signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month effectively banned Russia’s second-largest oil producer Lukoil from using Ukraine as a transit hub.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said late Tuesday that Lukoil was “not currently delivering to Hungary” due to a “legal situation in Ukraine.”
“Now we’re working on a legal solution,” he said after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York, according to Bloomberg.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that Slovakia’s economy ministry also confirmed that oil deliveries from Lukoil have stopped flowing there. The Central European country had secured deliveries from another supplier and the ministry was discussing the issue with its Ukrainian partners, the report said.
Hungary and Slovakia have equally split around 900,000 metric tons of Russian oil every month, according to industry sources cited by Reuters. Overall, Russia exported around 1.1 million metric tons (250,000 barrels per day) via the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline that runs through Ukraine.
Lukoil and Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz did not comment on the halted supplies, Bloomberg and Reuters said.
EU countries halted the vast majority of their energy purchases from Russia in a bid to exert economic pressure on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. But Russia continues to sell natural gas to Europe via Ukraine amid the bloc’s dependency on the supplies and Moscow’s need to fill its wartime coffers.
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