According to sources from Bloomberg on March 5, the European Union (EU) may allocate budget to directly support or send technical experts to restore the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline - the world's largest crude oil system connecting Russia with the southern branch running through Ukrainian territory, directly supplying oil to refineries in Hungary and Slovakia.
This is a technical solution to resolve the claims of Hungary and Slovakia - two countries blocking a loan package of about 98.1 billion USD for Ukraine. Hungary affirms that it will not approve this aid as well as new sanctions targeting Russia until the crude oil flow through this pipeline is resumed.
The bottleneck of the problem lies in the drastic stance of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Speaking in Kiev, he affirmed that he does not want to restore the flow because this is a direct source of income to help Russia finance the conflict.
However, the Ukrainian leader admitted that Kiev may be forced to repair and restart the pipeline if the EU does not find another way to overcome Hungary's veto power. "I do not want to restore it. But everything will depend on the decision of the EU countries," Zelensky declared.
The Ukrainian side said that the Druzhba station has been attacked nearly 24 times since the beginning of the conflict. The attack in January caused a 10-day fire, destroying the complex transformer and cable system.
According to the CEO of Naftogaz Group, repairs are expected to take 1 to 1.5 months, but the risk of re-attack is very high. Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is under pressure from the election in April and has announced that he will use all political and financial measures to force Ukraine to reopen the pipeline.
The incident is pushing Europe into a complex situation both domestically and internationally. On the one hand, the EU maintains energy sanctions targeting Russia; on the other hand, they must calculate the cost of repairing its own oil supply infrastructure to maintain consensus within the bloc.
Currently, the EU is negotiating with Kiev to send a field inspection delegation to verify the extent of damage. This is seen as the last effort to clear the loan package before Ukraine runs out of defense funds by the end of this month.
