Three EU member states are believed to have shipped 1.7 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Russian gas to Ukraine this year via reverse flow – a practice Gazprom doubts is legal.

According to Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of the board of directors of the Russian gas giant, Ukraine and the gas transportation companies of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia “have reconstructed their gas pipeline systems, allowing transporting gas via the border and its consumption metering.

ITAR-TASS quoted Medvedev as saying in response to an inquiry by Russian lawmaker Vladimir Gutenev on Friday that since 2012 European companies have supplied Ukraine with Russian natural gas aimed not for Ukrainian but for European consumers “as a rule, under a scheme of the so-called ‘virtual’ reverse, but with the gas moved across the Ukraine-EU border.”

Medvedev opined that Gazprom doubts the legality of the scheme.

Gutenev said Russian lawmakers are drafting a bill banning Russian exporters from supplying oil and gas to debtor countries, ITAR-TASS reported. 

Russia halted gas supplies to Ukraine in June over a dispute over gas prices and unsettled debt payments for past deliveries which totalled about USD 5.3 B as of August 1. Ukraine stopped paying for the Russian gas it had consumed in March