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Local officials in Kyiv on Friday urged residents to stop driving private vehicles to conserve Ukraine’s limited fuel supplies for troops fighting the Russian invasion, in an announcement that raised uncertainty about energy stability in Ukraine and the rest of the country reflected Europe.
City officials encouraged commuters to use public transport, which is slowly being restored after Russian forces aborted their attempt to seize the Ukrainian capital about a month ago. “Think of the needs of the army,” officials said in a Telegram post.
The wartime measures are a reminder that the global rise in energy prices following the February 24 invasion of Russia had very different consequences for Moscow and Kyiv. Two months after the Russian attack, Ukrainians are struggling to regain a sense of normality outside the immediate battlefield. (Kyiv now operates 140 buses, 70 trams and 77 trolleybuses, city data shows, up from about 150 buses and 30 trams on April 5, just days after Russian forces pulled out of the capital’s suburbs.)
In contrast, Russia has made tens of billions of dollars from exporting oil and natural gas, mostly to European Union countries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the fuel shortage in Ukraine in a speech on Friday evening. Russia has announced that it is targeting Ukraine’s fuel facilities, and Zelenskyy noted that the Kremlin’s blockade of his country’s seaports has exacerbated the energy crisis.
“Queues and rising prices at gas stations can be seen in many regions of our country,” he said.
Zelensky said his government will create a “system of fuel supply” within two weeks to alleviate the problem “no matter how difficult it may be.” He didn’t elaborate, but said Ukraine must “take as much fuel from the European Union as our citizens need now.” What he meant was not immediately clear. Part of Russia’s energy exports reach EU countries through pipelines crossing Ukrainian territory.
The prolongation of the war in Ukraine creates major problems for the world economy
The EU is grappling with major energy challenges, with Russia this week suspending gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. As the bloc sanctions Moscow for its aggression and seeks to scale back its energy purchases from Russia, prices are rising. Inflation in the euro zone – the 19 countries that use the euro as their currency – rose to 7.5 percent this month; Energy inflation hovered around 40 percent on an annualized basis.
That The 27 EU member states are still dependent on Russia for energy, with average monthly payments to Moscow for fossil fuel purchases rising many-fold in recent months.
According to a report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Finland-based think tank, EU countries have had about $46 billion worth of oil, natural gas and coal since the invasion began, or about $23 billion a month bought from Russia. Last year, EU imports of Russian energy totaled $104 billion, averaging just over $8.5 billion a month, according to the European Commission.
In the two months since the attack on Ukraine, Russia has exported another $20 billion in fossil fuels to non-EU countries including South Korea, Japan and Turkey, all of which have condemned the Kremlin invasion. China has bought about $7 billion in Russian fossil fuels since the war began.