Published March 25, 2026 — last updated March 25, 2026
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday his government will gradually halt natural gas deliveries to Ukraine until Russian crude oil again flows through the Druzhba pipeline, which Kyiv says was damaged in a January drone strike. Orban said remaining gas would be stored in Hungary. Hungarian pipeline operator FGSZ’s website, however, showed shipments continuing on Wednesday morning.
Landlocked Hungary and Slovakia, both granted temporary exemptions from EU sanctions on Russian oil because of their reliance, have blamed Ukraine for the outage and questioned whether the pipeline is truly out of service. The dispute has intensified amid higher oil prices after regional tensions involving Iran and the wider Gulf. Orban’s move also comes as he faces a difficult general election in early April and after he refused to lift his blockade on a €90-billion EU loan package for Ukraine. EU experts are in Ukraine assessing the pipeline and funding repairs; Kyiv indicates resuming deliveries could still take weeks.
Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted 398 drones overnight across 13 regions and the annexed Crimean peninsula — what state media TASS called the largest overnight attack from Ukraine since 2022. The announcement followed a massive barrage the previous day, when Russia said it fired nearly 1,000 drones and 34 missiles at Ukraine over 24 hours, including into daylight.
Among Russian sites targeted were the Baltic oil export terminals of Primorsk and Ust-Luga. Reuters cited sources saying both facilities suspended crude and oil products loadings after the attacks. Finnish paper Helsingin Sanomat reported a fire and heavy smoke at Ust-Luga visible from across the Gulf of Finland. Both sites had been forced to suspend deliveries on Sunday amid earlier strikes; Primorsk had been hit earlier in the week.
Ukrainian shelling overnight also caused power cuts for around 450,000 people in and around the Russian border city of Belgorod, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. In Ukraine, Russian bombardment disrupted power for about 150,000 households around Chernihiv.
Baltic states reported incidents of drones entering their airspace and crashing. Estonia and Latvia opened investigations after crashes, following a similar event in Lithuania. The incidents have raised concerns about spillover risks to NATO members and neighboring countries.
The developments underscore two linked dynamics: an escalation in long-range drone attacks increasingly aimed at energy infrastructure on both sides of the front, and the politicization of energy flows tied to domestic politics and international sanctions. Hungary’s threat to curtail gas to Ukraine adds a diplomatic and humanitarian dimension to the technical and security challenges of restoring Druzhba oil shipments, complicating EU efforts to support Kyiv while enforcing sanctions on Russia.