Russia has said its air defenses successfully thwarted an attack by three Ukrainian drones targeting a compressor station that is part of the Turkstream pipeline system, which transports Russian gas to Europe.
"In repelling the attack, Russian air defenses downed three Ukrainian drones at a safe distance from the compressor station," the Defense Ministry said in a statement, referring to the "Russkaya" station in southern Russia's Krasnodar region.
"The compressor station is now carrying out the flow of gas on the Turkstream pipeline in normal conditions."
It added that the attack on Saturday aimed to halt natural gas shipments to Europe amid an escalating energy row between the two countries, three years after Russia launched its full-scale military offensive.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, to use all means at his disposal to prevent future attacks. Fidan pledged to do so, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on its website.
In mid-January, the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had attempted to attack the same station with nine drones.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, whose country receives Russian gas through Turkstream, said on Facebook that Lavrov had informed him of the attack by telephone.
Szijjarto said the operation of Turkstream was critical to Hungary's energy security and called on the European Union to uphold guarantees that infrastructure linked to the 27-nation bloc would not come under attack.
TurkStream runs for 930 kilometers (580 miles) under the Black Sea from the Russian resort city of Anapa to Kıyıköy in northwestern Türkiye. It then connects to overground pipelines that run up through the Balkans to western Europe. Compressor stations are used to stabilize the pressure and flow rate of gas.
It has an annual capacity of 31.5 bcm. About 15.75 bcm is designated for supplies to Türkiye's domestic customers, and the rest is earmarked for European countries.
TurkStream and Blue Stream are Russia's last routes for supplying pipeline gas to Europe after Ukraine, at the start of the year, refused to renew a transit deal that had allowed Russia to keep pumping gas across its territory.
The 27-member EU has been reducing its dependence on Russian gas since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Despite the decline in imports via pipeline, several European countries have increased their purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is transported by sea.
Russia also used to ship gas to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea. The pipeline was the target of a sabotage attack in 2022, which also hit one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipelines – a second undersea gas link between Russia and Germany that was never put into operation.
