EU Ambassador Maternova wanted to inspect damage to Druzhba oil pipeline, Ukraine refused permission, — FT
EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Mathernova appealed to the Office of the President of Ukraine with a request to grant permission to inspect the damaged Druzhba pipeline or to send other European diplomats there, but received a refusal in response.
This was reported to the Financial Times by sources, according to Censor.NET.
What is known?
As the publication's interlocutors noted, Maternova's request was rejected by Ukraine on security grounds.
The publication states that EU countries and the European Commission, which are currently friendly towards Ukraine, are asking Kyiv to allow them to inspect the damaged oil pipeline.
Some sources report that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa specifically asked Ukrainian authorities to grant access to the Druzhba pipeline during their visit to Kyiv on February 24 in order to independently assess the damage, but were refused.
One senior EU diplomat said that Kyiv had scored an "own goal" by giving Hungary a reason to block the loan.
"We cannot say whether there is damage or not. There are very simple ways to document this and show that they are working hard to repair the damage. They have not done so," he commented.
Ukraine's response
In turn, a Ukrainian official close to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected suggestions that Kyiv was stalling, saying that technical experts from Ukrainian state energy company Naftogaz had provided their European counterparts with evidence that the Druzhba pipeline had been seriously damaged.
- Serhii Koretskyi, CEO of Naftogaz, told the FT that a Russian strike caused a fire in a tank storing 75,000 cubic meters of oil, which took 10 days to extinguish.
"Numerous pieces of equipment, power cables, transformers, and the leak detection system responsible for pipeline integrity were damaged," he said.
According to Koretskyi, the strike caused a fire in Europe's largest oil reservoir, "the diameter of which is equal to the size of a football field."
Given the scale of the damage, "a full assessment will take time and will be presented in the near future," he added.
During the attack, Ukrainian state-owned company UkrTransNafta stated that "emergency repair work is being carried out," but that Russia's continuous attacks are complicating safe operations.
