What is Vladimir Putin playing with economic sanctions? On Wednesday March 23, the Russian president announced a curious decision, which once again sent energy prices soaring, almost a month to the day after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. “I have decided to switch to payment in rubles for natural gas exports to so-called ‘hostile’ countries. » No more questions of dollars or euros, payments must now be made in Russian currency.
Mr. Putin is giving his federal central bank a week to arrange this. The measure is aimed in particular at the European Union, which is highly dependent on Russian deliveries, which represent around 40% of its gas consumption. After this statement, the price of gas in the Netherlands, the benchmark in Europe, jumped 34%, before ending the day up 9%. The barrel of Brent oil rose 5% to 121 dollars (110 euros), a historically high level.
Caught off guard, governments, analysts and other gas buyers were lost in conjectures to explain this gesture. Contacted Wednesday at the end of the day, the French Ministry of the Economy indicated that it was assessing its potential impact. In Germany, the Minister of the Economy, Robert Habeck, considered that this amounted to not respecting the delivery contracts, the currency of which is specified in advance.
Counter-penalty
The French gas company Engie similarly raises the question of the legality of such a decision: “Our contracts provide for payment of gas in euros, there are no clauses that allow the seller to change currency”declared on Franceinfo its president, Jean-Pierre Clamadieu. “We will try to understand what this position means, which for the moment has not been notified to us by our counterpart, which is Gazprom. »
Engie’s supply contracts with Gazprom run from 2006 to 2030. If they change the terms of payment for gas along the way, “the Russians could be slowly digging the grave of their long-term contracts”says Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations.
Mr. Putin advances a nationalist argument, saying that the euro, the dollar or even the pound sterling are “compromised” currencies
At this stage, Mr. Putin’s announcement leaves observers doubtful. Since the imposition of the American and European sanctions, Russia is precisely in lack of foreign currencies, nearly half of the reserves of its central bank having been frozen, that is to say approximately 300 billion dollars. Moscow should therefore be happy to receive foreign currency. So how to explain such a gesture? Mr. Putin makes a nationalist argument, saying that the euro, the dollar or even the pound sterling are currencies “compromised” after the “illegitimate decisions” to freeze reserves. It would therefore be a counter-sanction.
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