Russian gas flows via the Brotherhood pipeline across Ukraine will end at midnight on December 31, cutting the last operating direct pipeline link from Russia to the West. From next year the Ukrainian pipeline will only accept supplies coming westwards.

For Slovakia – the entry point of the pipeline into the EU – Ukraine’s move to end the gas transit is likely to raise gas prices and cut transit income but it will be manageable, analysts argue, yet it will worsen already bad relations between Bratislava and Kyiv.

To try to avert the gas cut-off, Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico – who, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban increasingly parrots Russian narratives of its bloody invasion of Ukraine – flew to Moscow to meet Russian dictator Vladimir Putin before Christmas. Fico also flew to Brussels in an unsuccessful attempt to try to persuade the European Commission of the country’s urgent need for pipeline gas supplies.

Fico  – only the third EU premier to visit Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine – offered to hold supposed “peace talks” between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy and Putin to end the fighting, an offer that Zelinskiy spurned. 

“The billions of euros from Russian gas are being used to kill civilians in Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said in response to Fico’s mission, adding that “when Slovakia says they can lose money or that it will be expensive to buy non-Russian gas, Ukraine has lost much more – we’re losing people”.

Zelenskiy also accused Fico of being instructed by Putin to "open a second energy front against Ukraine at the expense of the interests of the Slovak population".

Fico retaliated by even threatening to cut off Slovak power exports to electricity-hungry Ukraine if the gas cut-off goes ahead (it supplies 19% of the country’s power), prompting Poland to offer alternative supplies.

Ukraine sees the end of Russian gas transit as a way of putting further pressure on the struggling Russian economy and  refused to budge on ending pipeline transit with the contract extension set to expire at the end of December.

Russian provided some 35-40% of EU gas imports before its invasion of Ukraine, a proportion that has now halved, with some 15 bcm being exported to the EU in 2023. Think-tank Bruegel estimated that Russia would lose $6.5bn from the end of the flow, while Ukraine would lose $1bn in fees.

Russian supplies to the bloc continue via LNG purchases and the Turkish Stream pipeline via Bulgaria. The Brotherhood pipeline is estimated to have supplied around 5% of the EU's gas imports.

In 2024 some 18% of EU gas imports came from Russia, half the pre-war levels but slightly up from 15% in 2023, with Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria the countries that are still the most dependent on Russian gas. They are also among the countries that have made the least effort to find alternative supplies.

Slovakia can secure non-Russian supplies

But Slovak analysts argue that the country can adapt to the end of Russian pipeline supplies and that Fico’s stance has more to do with his close political ties with Orban and Putin, the cosy private business links that both countries continue to have with Russia, and his domestic political problems, rather than energy security.

Slovakia has already demonstrated the ability to get through the winter without Russian gas, Slovakia’s energy analysts point out. Slovak gas reserves are currently three quarters full.

Slovakia’s continued imports of Russian energy is “not a question of energy security”, Alexander Duleba, senior research fellow at the Slovak Foreign Policy Association (SFPA), told bne IntelliNews, explaining that Slovakia will have a sufficient amount of gas.  Duleba highlights that Slovakia survived the last winter practically without Russian imports.

“The consumption of Russian gas fell from 100% in the winter of 2021-22  to 8% in the winter of 2022-23”, he says, pointing out that the country imported 35% of gas from Norway via Czechia and Germany, while securing another 30% from LNG imports. 

Additionally, this was accomplished without the capacities provided by the Polish Świnoujście LNG terminal, which completed its expansion in 2023, opening another route for imports to Slovakia. 

Slovakia and its energy companies – including the state gas group SPP and gas transporter Eustream, where EPH of Czech energy and media oligarch Daniel Křetínský has a 49% stake and managerial control – “managed to secure a sufficient amount of gas” without Russia, Duleba says, adding that now Slovakia has a contract with Norway is extended, “so at least 35% can be imported from Norway”.  

Radovan Potočár, editor-in-chief of the Slovak energy-focused outlet Energie Portal,  says that Fico’s stance is mainly for political reasons. He told bne Intellinews in Bratislava last month that ultimately the government has the tools to intervene in energy price policy.

“Fico does not have to point a finger at Ukraine, he wants to do that,” Potočár observes.  

In mid-December, Fico’s cabinet confirmed it will continue subsidising energy prices, and Saková’s ministry estimated the additional costs of subsidising energy prices will amount to €291.5mn.    

Local businesses eye the return of transit profits

SPP – which secures some 3 bcm  for the Slovak market, or about 65% of market gas consumption – is still backing Fico’s left-right government in pushing for the prolongation of gas transit, because Russian gas is cheaper. 

“If SPP […] were to lose the gas imports from the east and the whole needed volume was purchased from another source and physically imported to Slovakia, it would cost us an additional €150mn,” Vojtech Ferencz, CEO of SPP, told the country’s media ahead of Fico’s talks in Brussels and Moscow. Ferencz joined Minister of Economy Denisa Saková in negotiations with Gazprom boss Alexei Miller.   

Ferencz argued that the additional costs will be reflected in gas prices on the market, and “if a cold winter comes, the situation can cause a lack of gas and difficulties with its supplies in all of Europe”.  

According to Zelenskiy, Fico claimed during the talks in Brussels that the costs Slovakia will incur with the ending of gas transit through Ukraine are €500mn, in which he probably included loss of the income from gas transit fees through Slovakia, Euractiv.sk noted – a significant source of income for Eustream. 

Duleba says that “the contract with SPP is advantageous mainly because Russians pay for the gas transit to the Ukrainian Slovak border in Uzhhorod themselves,” adding that “this is an absolutely ideal contract,” and that it is unlikely to see a contract where “a gas supplier would pay for its transit” ever again. 

“SPP is fighting for the continued gas transit because it is clear it will never again reach a contract like this” when a supplier brings the commodity at his cost all the way to the border. 

“That is why this gas is the cheapest one because Russians themselves pay for the transit,” Duleba reiterated, adding that at the same time, Eustream “is fighting for the return of the great scheme of gas transit through Ukraine to Slovakia”.

In the years before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine some 50-55 bcm of gas was transported through Slovakia annually on average, which yielded €400mn in profit after tax for each of Eustream’s shareholders – the Slovak state and EPH – Duleba estimated.     

“The problem is that following the war, Germans, Italians and French, which were the three largest clients before the war, stopped purchasing it,” changing the energy landscape in Europe dramatically and rendering the return of the pre-war order a “chimera”. 

Smer party relies on anti-establishment electorate

Duleba argues that for Fico there is an important political dimension to his effort to maintain Russian supplies. Fico’s supposedly leftist Smer party won the September 2023 elections on an anti-Ukrainian ticket, campaigning with the slogan “not a single bullet more” for Ukraine.

Although Fico and Smer once again demonstrated their close ties with private businesses by leaving room for commercial military supplies to Ukraine, Fico still needs to use radical rightwing and anti-Ukraine rhetoric to appeal to his anti-establishment electorate, which is  also targeted by the neo-fascist Republika and far-right SNS.   Like his mentor Orban – with whom he is more and more closely aligned – he has regularly criticised EU sanctions on Russia and aid to Ukraine, and has said he would veto any move to grant the country Nato membership, though he has yet to vote against the EU line on Ukraine in Brussels. 

“Fico has very skilfully developed this brand of politics which combines neo-Stalinism with the tradition of Andrej Hlinka [founder of the Slovak People’s Party, which ruled the World War II puppet state in Slovakia],” says Boris Zala, a former Smer MP and MEP who left the party in 2016 over its corruption scandals and shift rightwards. 

“Smer has not been a left-wing party for some time,”  Zala continued, adding that today, “Smer is a nationalist-conservative party mixing the nostalgia after [the pre-1989 communist] old regime with Slovak People’s Party rhetoric, thanks to which it can attract neo-Stalinists and Hlinka supporters alike”.   

Duleba added that today, Fico’s domestic preferences rely on a political polarisation, which mobilises the anti-establishment segment of the country’s electorate and which leans towards anti-Western rhetoric and nationalist sentiment. “The myth of Russia’s strategic importance” has remained powerful in modern Slovak nationalism since the 19^th century when the country was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and nationalists looked to the big brother Slav empire for support.   

“This mythology works for a significant part of the Slovak society,” Duleba agrees, adding that the rhetoric of gas as a strategic commodity from Russia fits into that. 

Fico has said he intends to “standardise relations between the Slovak Republic and Russian Federation” for which “activities related to the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II and victory over fascism” next May will help.   Fico has already said that he intends to go to Moscow for the anniversary.

Fico's hardening stance reflects the fact that the government is starting to come under serious political pressure amid serious cabinet divisions, falling poll figures and budget cuts. Duleba points to the protests against the government policies in the police, judiciary, media and culture, which are only likely to increase as a result of approving a package of measures to consolidate public finances, which has already triggered a crisis in the health system.   

Although the government approved an agreement with Health Labour Unions (LOZ) on December 20 that  averted a threatened  mass exodus of doctors in January, the internal frictions in the coalition reduced it to the slimmest possible majority of 76 in the parliament of 150 legislators. Additionally, four of the Hlas legislators have been critical of the far-right radical elements in the cabinet, including Minister of Culture Martina Šimkovičová. 

“The more unpopular measures to consolidate public finances, Fico will have to make, the more pro-Russian positions he will take up,” Duleba says.