“Ukraine is under pressure to let the EU inspect a damaged pipeline carrying Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia, as the two pro-Kremlin countries accuse Kyiv of overstating the impact of an attack by Moscow — despite what Ukrainian officials say is evidence of extensive destruction,” the report said.
According to five diplomats and EU officials who spoke to the FT, even pro
As tensions escalated, the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine, Katarina Mathernova, reportedly asked through the presidential office for permission to inspect the damaged pipeline herself or to allow visits by other EU diplomats. Those requests were denied for security reasons, the sources said.
One senior EU diplomat told the FT that Kyiv had "scored an own goal," giving Hungary reason to block a EUR90 billion ($104.5 billion) EU credit for Ukraine.
“We cannot say if there is damage or not,” the diplomat said.
“There are very easy ways to document it and show they are working hard to repair it. They haven’t done it.”
A senior Ukrainian official close to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected suggestions that Kyiv was stalling. He said technical experts from state energy company Naftogaz provided European officials with evidence that the Druzhba pipeline was seriously damaged by a Russian attack in late January.
Naftogaz CEO Sergii Koretskyi told the FT that a Russian strike ignited a fire in a storage tank that held 75,000 cubic meters of oil and that the blaze burned for 10 days. He said numerous pieces of equipment, power cables, transformers, and a leak
"The air attack caused a fire in the biggest oil reservoir in Europe, with a diameter the size of a football field," Koretskyi said. He added that a full damage assessment would take time and would be complete soon.
Satellite images reviewed by the newspaper show clear damage
to the pipeline from the Russian airstrike, but the report said the images
alone are insufficient to assess the full extent of the destruction.