The Russian group Gazprom announced on Monday that it would drastically reduce, from Wednesday, the supply of Russian gas to Europe via the Nord Stream gas pipeline, justifying the reduction with the maintenance of a turbine.

“The production capacity of the Portovaïa compressor station will increase to 33 million m3 per day on July 27 at 7 a.m.” (5 a.m. in Lisbon), Gazprom said, or about 20% of the pipeline’s capacity against 40% currently.

The decision was announced on Gazprom’s Telegram account.

Russia had already cut its delivery volume twice in June, saying the pipeline cannot operate normally without a turbine that is being repaired in Canada and has not been delivered to Russia due to sanctions imposed by the West in Moscow following the Russian invasion. from Ukraine.

Since then, Germany and Canada have agreed to recover the equipment for Russia, but the turbine has not yet been delivered.

For Berlin, this is a “political” decision and a “pretext” to put pressure on Western countries, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously warned that if Russia did not receive the missing turbine, the pipeline would operate at 20% capacity from this week due to the upcoming maintenance of a second turbine.

The Nord Stream gas pipeline connects Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea and, according to Gazprom, has a capacity of 167 million m3 per day. Several countries are heavily dependent on Russian energy resources.

Western countries accuse Moscow of using it in retaliation for the sanctions adopted after the Russian offensive in Ukraine.

For its part, the Kremlin claims that the sanctions are the cause of technical problems in the gas infrastructure and that Europe is affected by the measures it has imposed on Russia.

In a previous press release published today, Gazprom had already indicated that the delivery of the first turbine was blocked, pointing to “problems” due to “sanctions from the European Union and the United Kingdom”.