(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s top energy group Gazprom to accept ruble settlements for its natural gas exports and urged it to find a mechanism to allow such settlements within four days, it said. Friday the Kremlin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov clarified that the injunction did not concern Novatek, Russia’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia will demand payment in rubles for gas supplies to “unfriendly countries” after Western countries imposed several sanctions packages to force Moscow to end its invasion of Ukraine.
This decision provoked the ire of European countries who denounced a breach of contracts binding Gazprom, these contracts stipulating that payments should be made either in US dollars or in euros.
(Reuters editorial staff, French version Matthieu Protard, said by Jean-Michel Blot)