Russia cuts the light to another European nation
Lithuania has become the second European country within a month to suffer from the interruption of electricity supplies from Russia.
Inter RAO, the sole importer of electricity from Russia to Lithuania, has confirmed that the suspension of supplies will begin on Sunday, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Earlier this month, Inter RAO's Nordic branch stopped sending power to Finland after submitting a formal application for NATO membership.
"According to the decision of the electricity exchange operator Nord Pool, the trading of electricity generated in Russia, carried out by Inter RAO (through its subsidiary Inter RAO Lietuva), has ended" as of May 22, the Ministry said. of the Energy of Lithuania in a statement.
The reason for the interruption of the electricity trade between the two countries was not immediately clarified, even if it happens when the Baltic nation (and a member of NATO) was the first member of the European Union to cut natural gas imports. from Russia last month.
Lithuanian Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys said Friday that cutting Russian energy imports, including oil, electricity and natural gas, has allowed the country to become "energy independent".
While Lithuania says stopping Russian energy imports is a step towards energy freedom, Inter RAO explained that the country is unable to pay for electricity.
"Inter RAO has received warnings from [the stockbroker] Nord Pool about the suspension of trading by the branches due to the risk of not being able to pay for Russian electricity," the company told TASS.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently declared that "non-friendly" countries must pay for energy products in rubles. He said that if a country refuses to pay in Russian currency, "existing contracts will be suspended".
Lithuania will increase domestic electricity production and increase imports from other EU countries on Sunday. The latest figures show that Lithuania imported 17% of all its domestic electricity demand from Russia in 2021.
It is evident that Russian energy supplies are dwindling to NATO countries or to those trying to join NATO, along with those who refuse to pay the rubles. The problem is that the EU should be able to supply electricity to these Russian-dependent countries as well, and this at a time when both France and Germany are having electricity supply problems.
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The article Russia cuts the light to another European nation comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-russia-taglia-la-luce-ad-unaltra-nazione-europea/ on Mon, 23 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000.