Moscow is prepared to continue gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine after the current transit agreement expires at the end of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Vladivostok on Thursday.
“We and the Gazprom company want to meet our obligations with respect to our clients, with whom there are long-term contracts,” Putin told a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in the city on Russia’s Pacific coast.
He noted that Russia was not in a position to compel Ukraine to extend the transit agreement and that European countries, who could exert pressure on Kiev, were showing little interest.
In addition, he said that Poland had shut down the Yamal pipeline carrying gas through Belarus to Poland and Germany and that Germany had not connected up to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
In fact, it was Russia that shut down deliveries through the Yamal pipeline in May 2022 after Poland refused to switch to making payments in roubles.
Putin has repeatedly raised the issue of Nord Stream 2, as he did when Russia cut back and then halted deliveries through Nord Stream 1 in 2022, ostensibly on account of technical problems. This happened weeks before explosions damaged the pipelines in September 2022.
Gazprom, in which the Russian state owns a majority stake, showed huge losses last year. Attempts to replace its European business with Asian customers have not thus far yielded much success.
Talks with China on the construction of a second pipeline have come to a halt, with the Chinese unwilling to pay the prices that European customers paid in the past.
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