US officials are promoting a plan for Russia to resume natural gas sales to Europe via Ukraine’s pipelines, with a US intermediary, the Wall Street Journal reported on November 2, citing unnamed US, European and Ukrainian officials.

US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff promoted the idea during trips to Moscow and Kyiv in September. The proposal was put on the back burner last month after Ukraine paused strikes on Russian refineries under pressure from US President Donald Trump. Kyiv has since resumed attacks, Bloomberg reported. The source account does not say that officials formally put the proposal back on the table, so this story describes the renewed promotion without asserting a formal revival.

Witkoff and Kushner first urged Kyiv and European governments to resume Russian gas imports in October, and the European Commission rejected the idea within days. Routing Russian gas through a US intermediary could test how the EU’s legally binding phase-out applies to this arrangement. The regulation bars qualifying long-term Russian LNG contracts from January 1, 2027 and pipeline supplies from September 30, 2027, or November 1 if storage targets are not met. Its application to a US intermediary has not been established.

European capitals have so far closed ranks. “We should not buy anything that goes into Putin’s war chest, including Russian gas,” German Economy and Energy Minister Katherina Reiche said on October 26, as Poland’s Finance and Economy Minister Andrzej Domanski ruled out any return to Russian gas at a Polish-German business forum in Warsaw. Slovakia is the outlier and has said it will keep buying Russian gas, and the Kremlin has urged Europe not to rule out a return.

The refinery pause that shelved the gas plan lasted about two weeks. Washington refused Kyiv any reward for halting the strikes, and Ukraine broke the pause on October 30 when drones hit Rosneft's Novokuibyshevsk refinery in Samara region.

Relations between Washington and Kyiv hit a low last month after Trump struck a Russian diesel deal with President Vladimir Putin, under which the US held off tightening sanctions on Russia in return for Moscow supplying limited volumes of diesel to the global market to cool prices.

European gas prices reached their highest in almost four years, with the Dutch TTF benchmark approaching €100 per MWh in late October as conflict in the Middle East disrupted Qatari LNG exports. EU storage was 74.89% full on October 29, against a five-year average of about 89.7% for late October. Germany’s tanks were 61.61% full, adding to concerns over its ability to refill storage over the summer.

Ukraine’s transit pipelines are intact, and flows could resume if a deal were reached. Russian gas exports to Europe via Ukraine stopped when the five-year transit agreement expired at the end of 2024 and Kyiv declined to renew it.