Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced on Friday the opening of a section of a Russian gas pipeline, a project that, according to Belgrade, will be key to guaranteeing energy supply to Serbia.
Spanning 403 kilometers, the Serbian part of the gas pipeline will run from Zajecar (eastern Serbia) to Horgos, near the Hungarian border, and is part of the TurkStream project, with which Russia would supply gas from Turkey to Central Europe.
“This morning at 06:00 (05:00 GMT) gas began to flow from Bulgaria and entered the pipeline built in Serbia,” Vucic said on his Instagram account, in which he boasted that “it is a great day for Serbia!” .
At an event in the town of Gospodjinci (north), Vucic said that the inauguration of this gas pipeline is “key for the future development of Serbia” and that it will allow the country to provide itself with “energy stability and security.”
The Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Aleksandar Bocan-Harcenko, affirmed that the gas pipeline “will provide energy security in the entire Central European region,” in statements to the public broadcaster RTS.
TurkStream is an ambitious project by Turkey and Russia that aims to transport gas across the Black Sea
The president of the all-powerful Russian company Gazprom, Alexei Miller, indicated that six countries will receive gas through the TurkStream: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in July 2019 that the TurkStream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines were “a tool for the Kremlin to increase European dependence on Russian energy supplies”, which “hurt Ukraine.”
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