Putin threatens to turn off Europe’s gas supplies TOMORROW if countries refuse to pay in roubles

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Vladimir Putin today threatened to turn off Europe’s gas supplies from tomorrow if countries refuse to pay in roubles. 

The Russian President, announcing a decree in televised remarks, said foreign buyers would have to ‘open rouble accounts in Russian banks’ which can be used to pay for ‘gas delivered starting from tomorrow’. 

‘If such payments are not made, we will consider this a default on the part of buyers, with all the ensuing consequences. Nobody sells us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity either – that is, existing contracts will be stopped,’ he said. 

The move has been seen as a bid to bolster the Russian currency, which fell to historic lows when the West applied sanctions after he sent his army into Ukraine on February 24. Western companies and governments have rejected the demands as a breach of existing contracts, which are set in euros or dollars.  

Russia has been hit by sweeping sanctions on its economy and trade since the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine but measures by EU governments have not targeted oil and gas contracts with Moscow because many member states are heavily reliant on the Kremlin’s supplies. 

The European Union gets 30 per cent of its oil usage from Moscow and relies on Russia for 40 per cent of its gas consumption, costing the bloc £340million (€400million) a day. 

However Moscow cannot easily carry out threats of shutting off deliveries to Europe because the Kremlin has no alternative pipelines to redirect the oil and gas to other markets and does not have sufficient storage facilities to hold oil and gas reserves until alternative buyers can be found.   

Putin said the switch was meant to strengthen Russia’s sovereignty, and insisted Moscow would stick to its obligations on all contracts, if foreign buyers agreed to pay in roubles. 

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck today rejected Putin’s demands of payment in roubles as an unacceptable breach of contract, adding that the manoeuvre amounted to ‘blackmail’.

Separately, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said German companies would continue to pay for Russian gas using euros as stipulated in contracts. ‘By all means, it remains the case that companies want, can and will pay in euros,’ he told a joint news conference with his Austrian counterpart Karl Nehammer.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that companies do not plan to pay for Russian gas in roubles, adding that the government was monitoring the implications for the European market of President Putin’s demand. 

Asked if there were any circumstances in which Britain would pay in roubles for Russian gas, the spokesman said ‘that is not something we will be looking to do,’ adding that Putin’s latest decrees show ‘the impact that our sanctions are having on the Russian economy’. 

‘There are no gas pipes directly linking the UK with Russia, our imports from Russia made up less than four per cent of total UK gas supply in 2021 so we are obviously less reliant on it than many of our European partners,’ the spokesperson added. 

Putin said last week that Moscow would only accept roubles as payment from ‘unfriendly’ countries in retaliation for sanctions imposed over his invasion of Ukraine. According to Gazprom, 58 per cent of its sales of natural gas to Europe and other countries as of January 27 were settled in euros. US dollars accounted for about 39 per cent of gross sales and sterling around three per cent.

A Kremlin decree published today sets out that contracts will be stopped if buyers do not sign up to the new conditions, including opening rouble accounts in Russian banks. The buyers can still pay in foreign currency and authorise the bank to sell that for roubles, which are placed in the second account, where the gas is formally purchased. 

Putin also decreed today that foreign buyers of Russian gas will have to use special accounts at Gazprombank to pay for the import of Russian gas.

A foreign buyer is now obliged to transfer foreign currency to one special, so called ‘K’, account. Gazprombank would then buy roubles on behalf of the gas buyer to transfer roubles to another special ‘K’ account, the order said.

Gazprombank would then transfer rouble funds from a ‘K’ type account of the foreign gas buyer to Gazprom’s rouble accounts, the order said. Gazprombank can open such accounts without a presence of a foreign buyer’s representative. 

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, speaking during a joint news conference with his French counterpart, said: ‘With regard to the threat, demand or consideration – one doesn’t know what to call it anymore – to be made to pay in roubles, it is crucial for us that the contracts are respected… It is important for us not to give a signal that we will be blackmailed by Putin.’   

Germany on Wednesday triggered an emergency procedure to monitor gas imports and storage capacity and urged consumers and manufacturers to reduce consumption in preparation for any Russian delivery stoppage.

The network regulator said on Thursday the situation was stable and that storage had risen slightly. Habeck said he and French Finance and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire discussed possible new punitive measures on Russia, declining to go into details.

‘The last sanctions package must not and should not be the last. We spoke about what additional sanctions can prevent Putin from continuing the war in Ukraine,’ Habeck said.

Scholz also raised the possibility of new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, adding that Germany was prepared for all scenarios, including a stoppage of Russian gas flows to Europe.

Scholz reiterated that Germany hoped to become independent of Russian oil and coal imports this year, but it would take longer to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. 

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said ‘contracts are contracts’, but declined to elaborate on the next steps.  

Dutch companies Gasterra and Eneco said they would stick to the contracts, which meant they could pay for Russian gas in Euros. Gasterra said: ‘International agreements contain clauses about payments and currency. Sticking to the agreement remains our position.’   

It comes after Putin on March 23 announced ‘unfriendly’ countries would have to pay for gas in Russian currency in retaliation for Western sanctions over his war on Ukraine. 

‘Russia will continue, of course, to supply natural gas in accordance with volumes and prices… fixed in previously concluded contracts,’ he said, adding that sanctions had ‘destroyed Moscow’s trust’.

‘The changes will only affect the currency of payment, which will be changed to Russian roubles’ for a list of countries, corresponding to those that have imposed sanctions. 

Putin said at the time that the government and central bank had one week to come up with a solution on how to move these operations to the Russian currency and that gas giant Gazprom would be ordered to make the corresponding changes to gas contracts. 

Contractual changes would have meant European customers had to renegotiate their agreements, which are mostly in euros. 

The list of ‘unfriendly’ countries includes the United States, European Union member states, Britain, Japan, Canada, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and Ukraine. Among other things, deals with companies and individuals from those countries have to be approved by a government commission.

The move forced Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to declare on Wednesday an ‘early warning’ that it could be heading for a supply emergency. Germany imported 55 per cent of its gas from Russia last year. 

It is thought the move was intended to boost the Russian currency which fell to a record low of 120 to the dollar this month following the invasion of Ukraine, despite usually trading around 80 to the dollar. 

After the announcement on March 23, the rouble was 3.4 per cent stronger against the dollar at 100.02, its strongest since March 2. A higher rate means exports give a better return and more money can be pumped into the state coffers to pay for the war in Ukraine. 

Dollars, euros and pounds are also less valuable to Russia because with restricted access to international markets, the currencies are harder to use. Moscow had hoped to sell foreign currency investments for roubles to push up the price, but the plan was scupped when the West agreed to cut Russian banks out of the Swift global payments system in February. 

Instead, the Kremlin forced exporters to change 80 per cent of the foreign currency they receive into roubles. Putin is now reportedly considering pricing all energy and commodity exports in roubles, toughening the Kremlin’s attempt to make the West feel the pain of the sanctions it imposed for the invasion of Ukraine. 

‘If you want gas, find roubles,’ parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin  said in a post on Telegram. ‘Moreover, it would be right – where it is beneficial for our country – to widen the list of export products priced in roubles to include: fertiliser, grain, food oil, oil, coal, metals, timber etc.’ 

Meanwhile the head of Britain’s armed forces Admiral Sir Tony Radakin declared today that Putin has already lost the war in Ukraine and is weaker than a month ago, after it emerged demoralised Russian troops are refusing orders and are sabotaging their own equipment.   

Sir Tony said the Russian leader had overestimated his military’s power with his invasion, which has run into fierce Ukrainian resistance that has inflicted devastating losses on Moscow’s armies. He called Putin’s position ‘diminished,’ having damaged himself ‘through a series of catastrophic misjudgments.’ One example, he said, was the ‘insane’ decision not to tell members of his armed forces they would be invading.

He said Putin’s actions have only served to demonstrate the ‘unity and cohesion among the free nations of the world’, and show that Ukraine, unlike Russia, is supported by ‘real friend’.

The defence chief’s comments came the day after Sir Jeremy Fleming – the director of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence organisation – launched an unprecedented attack on Putin, claiming his bungled ‘personal war’ in Ukraine has backfired badly.

In a damning verdict on the ‘failing’ invasion, Sir Fleming said the command and control of Russia‘s campaign was in ‘chaos’, and revealed new intelligence showing that ill-prepared Russian soldiers are refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.

Meanwhile, the admiral’s comments on unity were echoed by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in an address to Australia’s parliament today. The embattled leader told lawmakers that his country’s resistance against Putin’s armies is ‘undefeatable’ with ‘the support of the free world’ behind it. 

He later told his citizens that thousands of people have died in Mariupol since the city was subjected to a campaign of horrific bombardment by Russia as evacuation attempts were underway to rescue some of the remaining 170,000 people still trapped in the besieged port city which is a site of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’. 

Ukraine is sending 45 buses during a 24-hour ceasefire period which began at 7am GMT this morning, but there are fears it will be broken again after a number of failed attempts. So far, 17 buses have already left from Zaporizhzhia, around 130 miles northwest of Mariupol, while another 28 are waiting to pass Russian checkpoints in Vasylivka.  

The capital Kyiv and Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine, came under continued bombardment at the hands of Russian forces and Zelensky told his war-torn nation to brace for a new Russian onslaught in the eastern Donbas region.

‘We don’t believe anyone, not a single beautiful phrase,’ Zelensky said in a late-night video message on Wednesday. ‘There is an accumulation of Russian troops for new strikes in Donbas and we are preparing for it.’

‘We will fight for every metre of our land,’ he said. 

Ukraine’s general staff on Thursday reported that some Russian units had already left northwestern Ukraine for Moscow-allied Belarus, and there was a ‘regrouping’ of units of the Eastern Military District. They also claimed that Russia was preparing to create ‘another pseudo-republic in the Kherson region’ in southern Ukraine.

Since 2014 Russia has backed two similar breakaway Donbas statelets in Lugansk and Donetsk and recently recognised their independence. The fate of these two self-styled ‘people’s republics’ is central to ongoing peace talks, with Kyiv insisting they are still part of Ukraine.

Russia has long sought a land link between the republics and also-occupied Crimea via Mariupol, which is now encircled by Russian forces. There are few signs of those attacks abating, despite recent talks in Istanbul and another round of video talks slated for tomorrow.

Both sides initially said the Istanbul meeting had made progress, but the Kremlin on Wednesday played down hopes of a breakthrough.

‘We cannot state that there was anything too promising,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Still, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Thursday said a higher-level meeting ‘at least at the level of foreign ministers’ could happen in a week or two.