Slovakia Resumes Russian Oil Imports via Druzhba After Three-Month Halt

Slovakia confirmed resumption of Russian crude flows via the Druzhba pipeline early on April 23 at 2 a.m. GMT, ending a nearly three-month outage since late January's drone strike. The restart followed Ukraine's April 20 announcement of end-April readiness by Zelenskiy, April 21 repair completion and force majeure lift at 18:00, and April 22 notification to MOL enabling 1.2-1.4 million bpd to Hungary and Slovakia. This eases Central European supply shortages, pressures regional oil prices downward, and unblocks Hungary's veto on a €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine.