Thank you.
It's due really....The issue of energy security in Europe is one that is not easy and is rather complicated, because of the big elephant in the room, which is Russia's Gazprom. Unfortunately, this elephant has been growing for decades. It has been hurting, buying and bargaining with a lot of countries in different ways..
Since the war started, we have seen several attempts by Russia to blackmail Europe. The first was the Russian decision to force countries to pay for Russian gas in rubles. We saw many countries, including many European countries, opposed to paying in rubles. This was the first move. Russia cut the gas to these countries, but they had already found a way to find alternatives. There was another big push. Unfortunately, the countries that accepted paying in rubles and followed Russia's blackmailing ended up in a situation where they now have almost zero gas flow.
These are the two lessons that are important for everybody to learn now. The first is that no appeasement of Putin's energy blackmailing can be successful. The second important thing is that Russia has already sanctioned, for example, a big Polish route that could be an alternative to Nord Stream 1.
Pipelines are the best examples of Putin's policy of using Russia to influence European policy. We had a story with another pipeline, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We, as Ukraine, and many eastern European countries have for years been advocating that this is a purely political project that has no grounds. A year ago, the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 were waived, but the sanctions were put back in February of this year.
We value and understand that after many lessons, we are all now on the same page that Nord Stream 2 was a political project, and now it is blocked. However, Russia is still raising this new question, so this is important. Once again, it is important that we not allow ourselves to make the same mistakes and appease Putin.
Many countries in Europe, especially those 12 that already faced the full cap cut of Russian gas, are finding alternatives. Everybody in Europe is finding alternatives. Since 2014, we, as Ukraine, have found ways to buy gas from other sources.