OREANDA-NEWS The Financial Times questioned the validity of the annual scheduled maintenance of the Nord Stream, putting the word “maintenance” in quotation marks in the title.

“The German government fears that Russia could take advantage of the annual maintenance of its main gas export pipeline to completely cut off gas supplies to the country,” the publication noted.

The article added that the situation with gas supplies is quite tense even without stopping supplies via Nord Stream.

The publication's experts agreed that in past years, during the repair of the pipeline, Gazprom made up for the shortage of fuel in Germany with supplies through Ukraine. Now there is a risk that this will no longer be the case. We are talking about the fact that gas supplies were reduced by 60%, but there was no compensation in supplies through other pipelines.

Market participants also pointed out that Gazprom's actions are "an unfriendly move."

Earlier on Thursday, The Financial Times wrote that the German government feared that Russia, as part of the annual maintenance of the Nord Stream pipeline, could stop sending its gas to the country.