Ukraine will not have enough gas until the end of the heating season - Reuters

Russia's missile and drone attacks on gas production facilities in Ukraine have reduced its volumes by 40 per cent. Due to the fuel shortage, our country will be forced to import it. In February and March alone, the Ukrainian government plans to purchase up to 800 million cubic metres of gas. This is reported by Reuters, citing its sources.

As the publication notes, before the Russian attacks on the network, Ukraine produced up to 52 million cubic metres of gas per day, and consumed 110-140 million cubic metres per day in winter, covering the difference with previously purchased gas. Now the reserves are insufficient to compensate for the fuel shortage.

The current level of gas production in Ukraine is not disclosed due to the sensitivity of the data in the conditions of war. But, as the agency's sources point out, the Russians have made a lot of efforts to make it as difficult as possible to extract gas in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions, where the main gas deposits under development are located.

Reuters recalls that the heating season in Ukraine ends in April. At the same time the country will start pumping gas into gas reservoirs for the next season 2025/2026. By that time it will be necessary to fill gas storages with 13 billion cubic metres of gas.

At the beginning of the current heating season, Ukraine had 12.9bn cu.m. of gas in gas storages," the journalists said.

Earlier, Prime Minister Denys Schmigal said that Russia was purposefully destroying Ukraine's gas infrastructure in order to leave the country without its own gas and consequently without heating, water and light and to provoke a humanitarian catastrophe.