It is the end of the paradox. Two years and 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky has now put an end to Russian gas deliveries through Ukrainian pipelines to European Union (EU) countries. As he had announced, the Ukrainian president has not renewed the Russian-Ukrainian transit agreement, which expired on Tuesday, December 31, 2024. No Russian gas deliveries to Europe via Ukraine are scheduled for Wednesday, January 1, Ukrainian gas transmission system operator GTSOU confirmed in the early evening of December 31. According to figures published on GTSOU's website, scheduled volumes for Wednesday are zero cubic meters, and deliveries will cease early in the morning.

On Wednesday 1, January, Kyiv and Moscow confirmed, in two separate statements, that Russian gas deliveries to Europe via Ukraine had definitively ceased, after the expiration of the contract signed between the two parties at the end of 2019.

Until now, this five-year contract bound the Ukrainian state-owned company Naftogaz to the producer Gazprom, of which the Russian state is the majority shareholder. Its non-renewal will mean a loss of revenue for the Kremlin, and to a lesser extent for Kyiv, as well as new energy tensions on the Old Continent.

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