Kyiv urges residents to quit driving, save gas for troops amid energy crunch
The wartime measures are a reminder of how the global spike in energy prices following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion has had very different consequences for Moscow and Kyiv. Two months after Russia attacked, Ukrainians outside the immediate battlefield are struggling to resurrect a sense of normalcy. (Kyiv now runs 140 buses, 70 trams, and 77 trolley buses, city data show, up from roughly 150 buses and 30 trams on April 5, just days after the Kremlin’s forces pulled out of the capital’s suburbs.)
By contrast, Russia has earned tens of billions of dollars in revenue off energy sales, mostly to the European Union.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged Ukraine’s gas shortage in his Friday night address. Russia has announced that it targets Ukrainian fuel production facilities and Zelensky noted that the Kremlin’s blockade of his country’s ports has added to the energy crunch.
“Queues and rising prices at gas stations are seen in many regions of our country,” he said.
The president said his government would create a “system of fuel supply” within two weeks to alleviate the problem “no matter how difficult it may be.” He didn’t elaborate, though he said that Ukraine must also “take from the European Union as much fuel as our citizens need now.” It was not immediately clear what Zelensky meant.
The E.U. itself is grappling with major energy challenges, with Russia this week suspending gas shipments to Poland and Bulgaria. As the bloc sanctions Moscow for its aggression and moves to decrease energy purchases from Russia, prices are spiking. Inflation in the Eurozone — the 19 E.U. countries using the euro as currency — clocked in at 7.5 percent this month, the highest ever; price increases for energy goods hovered at around 40 percent on an annualized basis.
The 27-member bloc is still dependent on Russia for energy imports, with average monthly payments to Moscow for fossil fuel purchases increasing several fold in recent months.
The E.U. has purchased about $46 billion worth of oil, gas and coal from Russia since the invasion, or about $23 billion monthly, according to a new report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Finland-based think tank. Last year, E.U. imports of Russian energy totaled $104 billion, averaging out to just over $8.5 billion monthly, according to the European Commission.
During the same period, Russia has exported an additional $20 billion of fossil fuels to non-E.U. countries, including South Korea, Japan and Turkey, all of whom have condemned the Kremlin’s invasion. China has purchased about $7 billion of Russian fossil fuels since war broke out.