At the beginning of April, Lithuania became the first European country to stop importing Russian natural gas. And on Sunday, the oil taps and electricity imports will also be closed. This was reported by the Lithuanian Ministry of Energy, according to the Danish business media Finans.
Dainus Kreivys, the country's Minister of Energy, calls it an important step towards energy independence.
- But it is also an expression of our solidarity with Ukraine. We will have to stop financing the Russian war machine, he says.
For many years, Lithuania received Russian natural gas through a gas pipeline that ran from Russia down through the Baltics and on to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which is located between Lithuania and Poland. In the future, natural gas will be imported via ships.
Natural gas becomes liquid when it is cooled to extreme temperatures, and thus it can be transported in barrels on ships from, for example, the USA.
Has closed off gas to several countries
In addition, a natural gas pipeline has been opened between Poland and the Baltic countries, writes the German media Deutsche Welle according to Finans. Russia has previously threatened and made serious efforts to close the gas taps to European countries.
At the end of April, the Russian gas company Gazprom announced that Poland and Bulgaria would no longer be supplied with gas. The explanation was that the two countries would not pay for the gas in rubles. On Saturday, Russia also stopped supplying natural gas to Finland for the same reason.
However, the Russian move also comes right on the heels of Finland submitting its application for membership in the Western defense alliance NATO this week. Gazprom is a Russian state-owned energy company. It has a monopoly on Russian exports through natural gas pipelines.
Ritzau
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