ATHENS — Athens and Kyiv signed an agreement on Sunday for Ukraine to import liquified natural gas to help meet the country’s winter energy needs, as Greece becomes the first EU country to actively participate in the U.S. plan to replace “every last molecule of Russian gas” with American LNG.

The plan calls for U.S. LNG deliveries routed through Greece from next month to March 2026 via the vertical gas corridor, a newly activated pipeline system for natural gas that includes pipelines, LNG terminals and storage facilities.

The project — actively lobbied by the U.S. — is intended to provide energy to Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, with Greece being the entry point for U.S. gas going up to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and farther north to Ukraine and Moldova.

“Ukraine gains direct access to diversified and reliable energy sources, while Greece becomes a hub for supplying Central and Eastern Europe with American liquefied natural gas,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, emphasizing Greece’s growing role as an energy hub.

The agreement will “cover nearly €2 billion needed for gas imports to compensate for the losses in Ukrainian production caused by Russian strikes,” Zelenskyy said in a statement Sunday.

The deal was signed during a visit by Zelenskyy to Athens, attended by Mitsotakis, Greek Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou and U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle. The agreement signed on Sunday formalized a declaration of intent between Greece’s gas company DEPA Commercial and Ukraine’s Naftogaz.

Greece aims to showcase its importance as an entry point for American LNG, bolstering Europe’s independence from Russian gas. Athens last week signed a 20-year deal to import 700 million cubic meters of U.S. LNG a year starting in 2030, aiming to boost U.S. LNG shipments from Greece to its northern European neighbors.

“What we see for the future of Greece and the United States is Greece being an energy hub and showing this energy dominance that both of our countries can experience and work together cooperatively to achieve tremendous outcomes,” Ambassador Guilfoyle said in an interview with Antenna TV on Thursday.

“Cooperation within the framework of the ‘vertical corridor’ may prove to be more decisive for peace and prosperity in the region than NATO,” Energy Minister Papastavrou told a conference in Athens on Tuesday.

In addition to the U.S. LNG deal, Greece has opened its waters to gas exploration for the first time in more than four decades, with American help, under an agreement signed with ExxonMobil, the U.S.’s biggest oil company, along with Greece’s Energean and HelleniQ Energy.

“This is understood and portrayed to be significantly adding to Greece’s value added as a commercial partner and geopolitical ally,” said Harry Tzimitras, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo Cyprus Centre.

But he also noted criticisms of Greece’s energy push, including environmental consequences, financial challenges and geopolitical risks.

“These span the whole gamut of the project’s aspects: Greece would have to double its storage capacity … requiring extensive construction of depots and LNG facilities with serious potential environmental footprint,” Tzimitras said.

“U.S. LNG is currently very expensive, straining energy budgets; the likelihood of  geopolitical antagonisms is heightened; and the whole project is identified as going against the efforts to achieve environmental targets, contributing to the delay in transitioning to renewable energy sources,” he said.