Russia exported 193 billion cubic meters to the European market last year. 110 billion - the total capacity of the two streams - is the lion's share of Russian exports. Traditionally, Ukraine played a key role in the transit of Russian gas to Europe. In recent years, this role has been reduced to 46 - 48% of the total gas that Russia supplied at the European market, passing through the Ukrainian gas transportation system. Ukraine receives 2-3 billion dollars of income annually for the transit.
Russia's strategy is not new. It was clearly written out in the Energy Strategy of 2003 and aims to create trans-border gas pipeline systems and not to use transit services. This is not just about Ukraine, but above all about transit countries. Why position of Poland is such an active? It suggests that in the case of Nord Stream 2, transit through the Yamal-Europe system, which passes through the territory of Belarus and Poland, also will be minimized.
Russia builds trans-border gas transportation systems not so much for business purposes, but for the purpose of creating a dominant position in the European gas market. If it will have an excess of gas transportation capacities, then it is able to punish and encourage someone arbitrary. This is a long-standing intention since the 1990s, which was once voiced by Gazprom's deceased chairman, Rem Vyahirev, "to cut down Ukraine in transit."
In parallel, it should be noted that this is not only about the implementation of the Nord Stream 2, which has not yet been built, as well as about the Turkish Stream. In fact, this gas pipeline reaches the middle of the Black Sea. Just by implementing these two projects, Russia tries to reach the situation when it will not use (or minimally use) the transit services of the Ukrainian gas transportation system. Then the EU will receive from the east 100% Russian monopoly on gas supplies to the EU. When in Berlin, Brussels denies Russia the transit of gas through Ukraine, Gazprom replies: we are not going to completely stop transit through Ukraine, we will leave approximately 10-15 billion cubic meters of transit.
For the gas transit system of Ukraine, which has a transit capacity of about 142 billion cubic meters per year, transit of 10-15 billion cubic meters will be a completely unprofitable operation. The purely economic factors and security forces Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states to oppose this Russian project. It contradicts not only the interests of Ukraine and Poland, but also the European energy policy, in particular the principle of diversification.
On the Ukrainian side, due to inaction of the country's top political leadership in recent years (the Nord Stream 2 appeared on the agenda in the summer of 2015), an appropriate system for ensuring Ukraine's energy security has not been created. An official coordinator of a number of departments should be appointed.
