As Eastern Europe marked the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2025, the region could rest assured of a sustainable future independent of Russian natural gas supplies. Almost all of Central and Eastern Europe is no longer dependent on natural gas imports from Moscow. In 2021, Eastern European countries imported almost half of their gas from Russia. (For the purposes of this article, the term “Eastern Europe” covers the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.) Only two countries in the region—Albania and Kosovo—were wholly independent of Russian gas. In 2024, five additional countries went without importing any Russian gas—six if Transnistria is excluded from Moldova’s import data. Russia went from supplying an average of 80 percent of each Eastern European country’s gas to 37.6 percent. It is a remarkable transformation that in 2022 many thought impossible. It has happened in part thanks to the EU being able to source gas from other exporters, but mainly because of the development of European liquefied natural gas (LNG) import capacity in the region and its neighbors, in particular Turkey. Natural gas prices in 2025 remain higher than before the start of the war in Ukraine. With discussion of a ceasefire now underway, some governments—those of Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia, for example—are calling for Russian gas supplies to resume. Yet, a fundamental economic shift has now occurred. Eastern Europe’s gas market will never return to where it was four years ago.
How Eastern Europe Overhauled Its Natural Gas Market | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
