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Election winner Meloni (Fratelli d'Italia): No gas for Italy
Photo: Yara Nardi / REUTERS
According to information from the Italian supplier Eni, Russia has temporarily suspended its gas supplies on land.
The Russian company Gazprom has announced that it can no longer deliver gas through Austria, Eni said.
Russian gas normally arrives at, and is distributed from, the Italian-Austrian border town of Tarvisio in Italy.
The delivery quantities had already fallen sharply in the past few days.
An Eni spokesman told the Ansa news agency that Gazprom had announced that it was no longer able to deliver to Austria.
However, that is untrue: According to information from Eni, Austria continues to receive Russian gas.
40 percent gas from Russia
By the time war broke out in Ukraine, Italy had received around 40 percent of its gas from Russia.
Then the government in Rome and the semi-state group Eni concluded agreements with a number of other countries - such as Algeria - in order to minimize dependence on Moscow.
In recent months, it has been said that Italy only gets around 25 percent of its gas from Russia.
The lack of gas from Russia will exacerbate an already worrying crisis.
The prospective future Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni must now deal with this.
She emerged victorious from the parliamentary elections with her right-wing populist party Fratelli d'Italia and the right-wing camp.
So far, however, they have not formed a coalition.
At an agricultural fair, Meloni promised farmers and producers to put "national interests in dealing with rising energy costs" first.
That's something that will change in the coming months, Meloni said.
Italy is defending its own needs again – “because everyone else is doing it too”.
rai/dpa/AP