CONCLUSION
Kyiv and Moscow finalized a bilateral deal to transport Russian natural gas to Europe through Ukrainian territory (See Part I in Eurasia Daily Monitor, January 22). Although the new five-year agreement on gas transit signed on December 30, 2019, represented a compromise for both countries, it proved an especially difficult and painful decision for Russia.
During the last five years, the Kremlin has been seeking to eliminate Russia’s dependency on the Ukrainian gas transit corridor. Two major Russian pipeline projects, the 55-billion-cubic-meter (bcm) Nord Stream 2 and the 15.75 bcm TurkStream (with a second 15.75 bcm going to Turkey), were supposed to be launched by the end of 2019, before the expiration of the previous 10-year transit contract with Kyiv. Together, these projects – two powerful pipelines that bypass Ukrainian territory to the north and south, respectively – aim to entirely remove the need to transport gas via Ukraine, with whom Russia has tense political relations (the two sides are de facto at war). But even with the launch of TurkStream on January 9, Russia is no closer to its goal of eliminating its reliance on the Ukrainian corridor (see EDM, January 16).