Reuters. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban accused Ukraine of "open political blackmail" on Monday (February 23), saying Ukraine was deliberately blocking supplies of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline.
Shipments of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Druzhba have been severed since January 27, when Kyiv said a Russian drone hit pipeline equipment in Ukraine. Slovakia and Hungary say Ukraine is to blame for the prolonged outage.
Speaking at the opening of the Hungarian Parliament, Orban said his government had found "no technical obstacles" to resuming oil flows through the pipeline and said it was up to Ukraine whether to resume flows or not.
Hungary looked set on Monday to block a new round of EU sanctions on Russia over the pipeline dispute and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would ask his country's energy grid to cut electricity supplies to Ukraine unless the pipeline was restarted.
The two countries have the only remaining refineries in the European Union using Russian oil shipped via Druzhba.
