Despite war, Ukraine allows Russian oil and gas to cross its territory – “The Washington Post” publishes an article with this title.

“Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country, Ukraine continues to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors - generating revenue for Kyiv and Moscow and illustrating how hard it is for the bitter enemies to cut ties.

Senior Ukrainian officials have demanded that their Western partners impose tougher sanctions and cut virtually all economic ties to Russia, saying “more must be done” to cripple Moscow’s war machine. But as surreal as it might seem, Ukraine insists that it has virtually no choice but to maintain its own commercial deals and has lobbied to preserve them, arguing that they provide some leverage over the Kremlin and help constrain where the Russian military carries out airstrikes.

Oleksiy Chernyshov, the chief executive of Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz, conceded the bizarre optics of Ukraine still doing business with Russia. “It is for me, it’s impossible, as a Ukrainian citizen - that is my first reaction,” Chernyshov said, adding that this was a personal and emotional response.

But Naftogaz - and senior political leaders - insist that Ukraine cannot and should not shut the pipelines, both to lay claim to residual revenue (although the amount Moscow is paying, if anything, is not public information) and because some of Kyiv’s European supporters are still dependent on Russian oil and gas.

Russia’s continuing profits, and Kyiv’s frustrations, were spotlighted recently in classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the Discord messaging platform, which said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky considered blowing up the Druzhba oil pipeline earlier this year.

According to the document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. officials questioned the seriousness of the threats, which may have been an outburst of frustration at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has voiced pro-Kremlin positions and insisted on an exemption from a European Union effort to end purchases of Russian oil.

Moscow sent about 300,000 barrels of oil per day last year through the Druzhba - or “Friendship” - pipeline, which crosses Ukraine. Russia is also obligated to pump some 40 billion cubic meters of gas annually through Ukraine’s gas transit system because of supply agreements that predate the full-scale invasion in February 2022“, - writes the author.