Slovakia has started Tuesday the reversed flow of gas to Ukraine, which stopped receiving gas from Russia on 16th of June, announced the Government in Bratislava, writes AFP, quoted by Mediafax. The gas flows through a pipeline linking eastern Slovakia and western Ukraine, unused until the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine grew.

This operation “will improve energy security of Ukraine. It’s about the best possible technological and legal solution”, said the Slovakian Prime Minister during the inauguration of exports.

From the Ukrainian government in Kiev, its prime minister said that with the opening of the country’s import flows from the EU, Ukraine can replace about 40% of the gas that used to buy from Russia.

The maximum capacity of this pipeline, ten billion cubic meters per year, could be achieved in next spring. Ukraine consumes about 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year, of which about 30 billion were imported from Russia. And RWE resumed in April deliveries to Ukraine, but through Poland, nearly two years after the signing of the agreement between the German company and the government in Kiev.

Ukraine needs all the gas it can get through pipelines from Europe since it admitted that it cannot pass the winter of 2014/2015 only with what it has in storage facilities.