EU sources told The Daily Telegraph that the crisis is expected to escalate on Wednesday as European patience runs out with Russia.
Russia has “done everything it can to damage the Ukraine’s credibility as a transit country”, said the source.
According to EU monitors sent to check pipelines in Ukraine and Russia, the Russians resumed supply only to then deliberately channel gas via difficult routes and at insufficient pressure to guarantee supplies to Europe.
Officials close to negotiations have also reported that Russia has tried to physically block EU monitors, sent to both countries to monitor gas flows.
“Russia played a trick by saying it would resume supply. Russia set this up to convince everyone it is the Ukraine’s fault not their own,” said a European source.
So far so good right? But Spiegel is telling a different story…..
But before the supplies could even get to the EU, the pipelines were reportedly shut down again. European Union observers in place to monitor gas flows said they had measured “little or no gas” in Ukraine. They said it was too early to draw conclusions from the observation, but the situation “is obviously very serious and must be improved quickly.”
Kiev soon admitted that it had, in fact, blocked the transit of Russian gas through its territory, citing “unacceptable conditions for transit” that had been imposed by Gazprom, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s state-owned Naftogaz, which manages the pipelines, told the French news agency AFP.
Regardless of who is right, it does not look like the EU is going to get its gas anytime soon.