Slovakia and Hungary have increased pressure on Kyiv after they said last week they had stopped receiving oil from Lukoil via Ukraine. Hungary receives 2 million metric tons of oil from the Russian group annually, around a third of its total oil imports, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said.
The two countries have initiated a consultation with the European Commission, he said, adding the Commission had three days to respond.
If the consultation procedure did not yield results, Hungary and Slovakia would take the issue to an international court of their choosing instead, he said.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the head of Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz acknowledged a lack of oil from Lukoil.
What is crazy for me in this story is how this oil pipeline survived two and a half years of the full scale war with destroyed cities and burned ground…
Surely Russia took extra care to leave it unharmed for that sweet, sweet oil money.
Maybe Ukraine should rebuild their hospitals, schools and supermarkets above the pipeline! /s
Even so, it’s baffling to me why Ukraine didn’t shut it down earlier
Because both of them can shut down EU aid and Ukraine got money from Russia for the transit(yes really).
is there political analysis of why its still operational? where does it cross the country?
It looks like it is going near the Kherson city. It crosses the Russia-Ukraine border somewhere near Donetsk. Looks like it s going through the territories affected the most by the invasion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druzhba_pipeline?wprov=sfla1
You are mixing something up. The part going to Hungary and Slovakia flows from Belorussia, West of Kiiv, there were no clashes there.
Here is a better map, the now closed section is labeled Southern Druzhba:
(This map also shows some planned unbuilt extensions to Croatia)