Ukraine-Russia gas transit deal at critical moment of truth

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : Last year, Russian gas made up around 8% of EU imports.
55% : Now, because of the bloc's efforts to diversify energy sources away from Moscow and expand renewables, the European Commission is staying out of negotiations.
51% : The end of transit of Russian gas would cost the EU an additional 120 billion euros ($125 billion) in energy costs over the next two years, according to Fico.
51% : Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also proposed moving the location of Russian gas sales to the physical border between Russia and Ukraine, which would transfer gas ownership to European buyers and oblige Ukraine to ensure transit under its free trade agreement with the EU, according to people with knowledge of the issue.
50% : "The row over the Russian gas will worsen the wedge between EU members, aligning neatly with Russia's interest in seeing European support for Ukraine fracture," said Bota Iliyas, a senior analyst at PRISM, a strategic intelligence firm.
50% : AS and its gas network operator Eustream AS - alongside Hungary's MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Plc., trade associations and large industrial customers from Austria and Italy - have urged Zelenskyy to allow shipments to continue.
43% : It's an extremely costly move, one that we, in the European Union, will pay for," Fico said.Ukraine's Energy Minister German Galushchenko hit back on Saturday, telling a local television station that he alerted the EU and the region's energy community that a halt in power supply will violate European regulations.
41% : Permitting further Russian gas to transit through Ukraine would undermine the message that the EU can no longer do business as usual with Putin's Russia, said Benjamin L. Schmitt, senior fellow at the CEPA think-tank and the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
38% : He said he was also ready to allow shipments of non-Russian fuel if a request was to be made by the European Commission - an offer which he claimed the Slovak leader rejected.

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