RUSSIA AGAIN SLASHES NATURAL GAS EXPORTS TO EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Russia reduced natural gas to Europe again Friday, including cutting flows by half to Italy and Slovakia and completely to France, as countries have worked to ease their dependence on Russian supplies amid the war in Ukraine.

It marks the third day of significant reductions to the fuel that powers industry and generates electricity in Europe, which also have hit Germany and Austria. It has further spiked already-high energy prices that are driving record inflation in the European Union.

Russia has blamed a technical problem for the cuts to the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline serving Germany and France, saying equipment being refurbished in Canada was stuck there because of Western sanctions. Leaders in Germany and Italy called the reductions a political move, and it has escalated the energy tensions in Europe, following Russia’s previous cutoff of natural gas to Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that the reductions are “blackmail (against) both individual countries and Europe as a whole.”

Russia told Slovakia’s state-controlled gas company SPP that it would reduce deliveries to the country by 50 percent, SPP director Richard Prokypcak told a conference in Bratislava. The reason for the reduction has not been made clear.

Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom told Italian gas company Eni on the same day that it would supply only 50 percent of the amount of gas requested for Friday, reducing the flow to one of Europe’s biggest importers of Russian gas for a third day.

Gazprom reduced by 15 percent Italy’s requested delivery on Wednesday. The ANSA news agency reported the Russian company dropped it by 35 percent on Thursday. Italy gets 40 percent of its gas from Russia but has been working to find alternative sources in countries like Algeria.

France is no longer receiving any natural gas from

Russia. The French gas network operator GRTGaz said Russian supplies via Germany came to a halt Wednesday, after dropping by 60 percent over the first five months of the year.

The operator said Friday that despite the halt in Russian supplies, no disruptions to gas supplies are expected this summer, in part thanks to more shipments via Spain. France normally gets about 17 percent of its natural gas from Russia, but overall gas is a relatively small part of France’s energy mix, at about 16 percent.