Latvia is no longer receiving gas from Gazprom. The Russian energy company said Latvia had violated acceptance conditions. Latvia had recently declared that it seeks to become independent from Russian gas entirely starting in 2023.

The Russian state-owned company Gazprom has completely stopped exporting gas to Latvia. The EU state in the Baltic States has “violated the conditions for gas extraction,” Gazprom said via Telegram. The company did not provide details of the violations.

The Latvian utility Latvijas Gaze said on Friday that it buys gas from Russia but not from Gazprom. “We get it from another provider,” the company said. The name of the provider is a trade secret, however.

Russia had recently halted gas supplies to several EU countries, including Poland and Bulgaria because they refused to pay in rubles. President Vladimir Putin introduced the scheme in response to EU sanctions against Russia over Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Payments were previously made in euros or dollars. The Latvian supplier Latvijas Gaze then declared that it would continue to pay for Russian gas in euros, nonetheless.

The Latvian government recently announced that it intends to stop importing Russian gas from January 2023 completely. This applies above all as a reaction to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Last year, Latvia got about 90 per cent of its gas from Russia.

Image by The Russian Presidential Press and Information Office (Wikimedia)/Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)