Druzhba oil flows halted over unpaid transit fees: 9 August 2022
A look back at the dispute over Russian crude moving through Ukraine to three Central European states, and a decree on foreign asset sales.
What happened to the oil flowing through the Druzhba pipeline on 9 August 2022? Russia's Transneft said that day that Ukraine had suspended Russian oil flows to the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Transneft's explanation was that it had been unable to pay transit fees to Ukraine's pipeline operator, UkrTransNafta.
The account placed the cause in payment rather than in any physical fault. Transneft linked the suspension to the unpaid transit fees, and the three countries named were the ones affected by the halt.
The Czech Republic's pipeline company offered a more reassuring view on the same day. It said it expected supplies through the pipeline to restart within several days, which suggested it saw the interruption as short-lived.
The episode belongs to the wider 2022 dispute between Russia and the European Union over energy, where payments and supply were closely tied.
A separate economic measure had come four days earlier. On 5 August 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning investors from "unfriendly countries" from selling their assets in Russian banks, strategic entities, and energy and commodity projects until 31 December. Taken together, the two developments showed how commercial arrangements, from pipeline fees to asset ownership, were being reshaped during the war.
