Gazprom lost to Ukraine and refused to supply gas to it. Kyiv urged citizens to save a hashtag #screw

Gazprom and Naftogaz of Ukraine have a lot of claims to each other. Gazprom sells gas to both Ukraine and several dozens of other countries. In addition to the gas pipeline system of Ukraine, it goes to consumers through the North Stream along the bottom of the Baltic Sea and the Yamal -Europe gas pipeline. Naftogaz and Gazprom repeatedly argued about the terms of contracts - in the winter of 2009 this even led to the temporary termination of deliveries. With mutual claims, they apply to the Stockholm Arbitration Court, where they agreed to solve all controversial situations.

On February 28, 2018, Gazprom lost the Naftogaz court. The arbitration partially satisfied the requirements of the Ukrainian company and ordered Gazprom to pay Ukraine $ 4.6 billion for a shortage of transit gas. Given the decision on another dispute (there is already “Naftogaz” to Gazprom two billion dollars), the Russian company turned out to be the Ukrainian side of $ 2.56 billion. Gazprom said that they would dispute the court decision.

On March 2, Naftogaz announced that Gazprom had violated the agreement and reduced the pressure in the gas pipeline. Ukraine, if he wants to get gas from Russia, must pay in advance for a certain volume. Naftogaz wanted to purchase fuel in March, but, according to Naftogaz, Gazprom unexpectedly returned the money and brought to the minimum of delivery to other countries (it is likely that Naftogaz could not take this fuel for himself). The head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said that contracts with Ukraine would be torn at all. “In such a situation, the continuation of the action of contracts for Gazprom is economically inappropriate,” the company said.

Naftogaz called the decision of Gazprom political. The company’s statement published on her Facebook page says that Russia wants to play the map “Ukraine is an unreliable transient and selects gas”. “It would be very appropriate, just two weeks before the elections, you yourself know who. Even waving with nuclear weapons does not help the Russians interest them to come to the polls, ”the Naftogaz statement said.

The company asked all consumers, “who has boilers”, to reduce the temperature in the rooms by 1-2 degrees. This will reduce the need for gas by 8-9%. Public utilities have already reduced the temperature in houses with central heating in Kyiv and other cities. In Kiev, in some apartments, the temperature dropped to 17 degrees, and in some cases even up to 9 degrees. In Khmelnitsky, it was reported that the temperature in the batteries of apartment buildings decreased to the "summer state". On March 2, it is recommended to close all educational and preschool institutions in the country - at least until March 6. Industrial enterprises partially switch from gas to fuel oil.

In Ukrainian social networks, a flash mob #shit. The hashtag invented by Naftosag in just an hour went to third place in the trends of the Ukrainian Twitter. He was supported by President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. He wrote that #Scricking is an important initiative of Naftogaz and urged everyone to voluntarily reduce the temperature in apartments by one degree in order to “destroy the script of the Russian Federation”. The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine sent a note of protest to the European Union due to the cessation of gas supplies. The EU stated that they were concerned about the situation - after all, it can lead to a stop of gas transit to Europe. Naftogaz claims that you need to hold out for 3-4 days, after which the temperature on the street will increase. Now in Ukraine up to minus 20 degrees at night, in cities of the central and eastern part of the country there is heavy snow. A slight warming is expected at the weekend.

Juliana Skibitskaya, Alexander Polivanov