MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/. Gas production in Ukraine has decreased by 40% after critical gas infrastructure was damaged, Director at the Energy Industry Research Center Alexander Kharchenko said.
"According to figures available to me, those attacks virtually limited our gas production by 40%. <…> Our calculations say that we need at least 4.5 billion cubic meters of imports for making sure that the next winter passes smoothly regarding gas," he said in an interview aired by the YouTube channel of a Ukrainian media center.
The main problem Ukraine is facing now is funds as the purchase of 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas costs around $2 billion, while Kiev's Western partners refuse to help, the expert added.
Russian Defense Ministry reported earlier that gas processing facilities in Ukraine supporting the operation of military enterprises had been damaged. In January, the Russian Defense Ministry also reported that Russian military hit ground infrastructure at one of the country’s largest underground gas storage sites in Stryi, the Lvov Region. Ukraine increased imports by 12 times in February, which became a record monthly volume over the past 1.5 years.