The move effectively puts the ball in Brussels’ court as it mulls a response to the brewing crisis. Late on Monday, Slovakia halted its emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine, whose own energy sector is in crisis after years of Russian bombardment.
The pushback against the pipeline outage didn’t stop there: Hungary has also blocked a previously agreed €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine, which is needed to keep the country solvent as it defends itself against Russia’s invasion.
EU foreign ministers also failed to agree on new sanctions on Russia on Monday afternoon, with Slovakia expressing reservations about the package.
Ukraine, however, has done little to calm the tensions. In the early hours of Monday it executed a drone attack on a Russian pumping station that is a key supply hub for the contested oil pipeline.
An official from the Ukrainian Security Service told POLITICO that the service “methodically reduces the filling of the Russian budget with petrodollars, which finance the war against Ukraine. This work will continue in the future, to exhaust and gradually bleed the Russian economy.”
The Slovak foreign ministry said later on Monday that Ukraine hadn’t shared details of the attack with Bratislava.