Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described European allies’ attitude over the Druzhba oil pipeline as “blackmail.”
In remarks made public Sunday, the Ukrainian leader criticized European pressure to allow oil to flow through the pipeline, which connects producer country Russia to Europe by way of Ukraine.
The pipeline has been offline since January after a Russian attack and has been at the center of a bitter row between Ukraine and Hungary.
Budapest has accused Kyiv of deliberately blocking progress on repairing the infrastructure in order to engineer an energy crisis in the Hungary. In response, Hungarian Prime Viktor Orbán has been blocking the release of a €90 billion tranche of EU funding for Ukraine needed to keep the war-torn country financially afloat.
