European Union heaves sigh of relief as Russia restarts gas supply

Russia says Ukrainian drone struck nuclear plant but caused no damage

Russia resumed pumping gas via its biggest pipeline to Europe on Thursday after a 10-day outage, allaying some of Europe’s immediate supply fears but not enough to end the threat of rationing to cope with potential winter shortages.

Supplies via Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea to Germany, were halted for maintenance on July 11 but, even before that outage, flows had been cut to 40 per cent of the pipeline’s capacity in a dispute prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Thursday’s flows were back at that 40 per cent capacity lev­el, Nord Stream figures show­ed, a day after