Putin to Europe: You can not give up our gas, but we are going east

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday (February 25th) that Moscow had shifted its export route to the eastern hemisphere as European countries sought to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, Fars reported. will give.

According to Reuters, Vladimir Putin stressed that European countries will not be able to completely cut off their dependence on Russian gas.

Russia has established closer ties with Asia, especially China, in an effort to diversify its gas customers. China is currently the world’s largest customer of energy products.

Western sanctions against Russia under the pretext of a military strike on Ukraine have affected its energy exports. These sanctions have made it difficult and complicated to finance energy deals with Russia.

“The surprising thing is that our partners in non-Russian countries have themselves acknowledged that they can not proceed without Russian energy resources, including gas,” Putin said at a meeting with members of the Russian cabinet. There are currently no reasonable alternatives [برای گاز روسیه] “It does not exist in Europe.”

In another part of his remarks, the Russian President stated that European countries have increased prices and created market instability by cutting off energy supplies from Russia.

Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has prompted 27 European member states to reconsider their energy supply priorities. Brussels seeks to reduce countries’ dependence on Russian gas. Moscow currently supplies about 40 percent of the EU’s natural gas.

The Russian president stressed that Moscow needs to build the necessary infrastructure to increase energy supplies to Asian countries. Russia began supplying gas to China at the end of 2019 after several years of grueling talks and agreeing to reduce fuel prices.

Putin’s remarks came amid the latest US, Canadian, British and Australian bans on Russian oil imports in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. The ban on Russian energy imports is part of a wide-ranging anti-Russian embargo designed to cut off Russia’s economy from the world trade and financial system.

Putin blamed the current energy crisis in Europe on countries’ refusal to “cooperate normally with Russia and thus hit millions of Europeans.” “Of course, we also face problems, but these (problems) create new opportunities for us,” he stressed.

On Wednesday, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said Moscow was ready to sell its oil and oil products to “friendly countries” because traditional importers avoided buying energy from Russia, forcing Russia to produce its own crude oil. Reduce.

Russia ordered a military strike on Ukraine on February 24. This development came days after Moscow formally recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics in eastern Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his military operation is aimed at “demilitarizing Ukraine” and “de-Naziizing” the country.

Russia has also said that Ukraine has not fulfilled its obligations under the Minsk agreements reached in 2014 and 2015 to resolve the dispute between separatists and Kiev.

Hours after the Russian invasion, Ukraine announced that it had cut off all diplomatic ties with the country. In response to Russia’s military action, Western nations have repeatedly imposed sanctions on most of Moscow’s financial institutions, energy sector and political elites, including cutting off several Russian banks’s Swift banking messaging system.

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