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By Krisztina Than and Julia Payne<\/p>\n
BUDAPEST\/BRUSSELS, April 22 (Reuters) – Russian oil flowed through the Ukrainian section of the Druzhba pipeline on Wednesday after a halt lasting months, officials said, allowing Hungary to lift its veto on a 90 \u200cbillion euro ($105.79 billion) EU loan urgently needed by Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The Druzhba pipeline has become one of the most politically charged pieces \u200cof infrastructure in Europe since a Russian drone strike damaged the pipeline in western Ukraine and stopped Russian oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia.<\/p>\n
Hungarian oil group MOL said \u200bon Wednesday that Ukraine had informed it that deliveries of Russian crude had resumed through the pipeline.<\/p>\n
“MOL expects the first crude oil shipments following the restart of the Ukrainian section of the pipeline system to arrive in Hungary and Slovakia by tomorrow at the latest,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian news outlet Izvestia that technical details of oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline were being \u200cdiscussed at a corporate level.<\/p>\n
“MOL is also involved \u2060in this matter. Contacts are being maintained through corporate channels. I don\u2019t know the details, because there should have been a request for pumping. … This is, rather, a corporate matter,” Peskov said.<\/p>\n
EU LOAN APPROVAL SHORTLY \u2060AFTER PUMPING RESUMED<\/p>\n
Pumping began at 0935 GMT, an industry source said, asking not to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly.<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards, EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels approved the loan. The European Union’s 27 member states are expected to formally sign off on it by Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian \u200bPresident \u200bVolodymyr Zelenskiy said the EU’s decision was “the right signal under the current circumstances”. \u200bWriting on X, Zelenskiy said that incentives for Russia \u200cto end its war in Ukraine “can arise only when both support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia are sufficient”.<\/p>\n
The EU had agreed in principle to the loan last year to maintain Ukraine’s liquidity through 2026 and 2027 but Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Slovak government had blocked it, accusing Ukraine of delaying repairs to the pipeline, which Kyiv denied.<\/p>\n
Both Hungary and Slovakia are heavily dependent on Russian oil and Orban has consistently shown support for Russia.<\/p>\n
CHANGE OF PRIME MINISTER IN HUNGARY<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s prospects of receiving the loan had already improved \u200cwhen Orban lost Hungary’s parliamentary election on April 12. The leader of the \u200bwinning party, Peter Magyar, said he would no longer block the EU funds \u200bfor Ukraine, though he is not expected to take power \u200buntil next month.<\/p>\n
The capacity of Druzhba, which in Russian means friendship, is 1.2 million to 1.4 million barrels \u200cof oil a day, with the possibility of increasing \u200bto up to 2 million barrels \u200ba day. However, flows fell to a small fraction of that as a result of Western sanctions as well as repeated disruptions from drone attacks.<\/p>\n
Separately, Germany confirmed that no Kazakh crude would reach its PCK Schwedt refinery – one of the country’s largest – \u200bfrom May, after industry sources said on \u200cTuesday that Russia was set to stop Kazakhstan’s oil exports via the Druzhba pipeline.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8511 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Anna \u200bPruchnicka, Krisztina Than, Jan Lopatka, Julia Payne, Bart Meijer, Lili Bayer; Writing by Jan Strupczewski and Ingrid Melander;Editing by \u200bTomasz Janowski, Barbara Lewis, Kirsten Donovan, Will Dunham and Ron Popeski)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n