a new long term natural gas transit contract and fears are growing that in europe it could be a cold winter russian gas bound for the e.u. is currently pumped through ukraine and disagreements over payments have moderations between russia and ukraine even goes so far as to freeze gas deliveries western europe is dependent on russian gas so as the transit countries so other transit countries through which the russian pipelines past bought the new undersea nord stream to pipeline bypasses ukraine and poland and changes the game completely russia can effectively weaponize the pipeline by cutting off supplies to countries like ukraine while keeping western european customers supplied. this is the end of a very long pipeline 200000 steel tubes running 1230 kilometers under the baltic sea the energy megaproject nord stream to is almost complete. russia says the