Russia will not cut off gas supplies to “hostile countries” until mid-April

This Friday the requirement to Russia that will force the “hostile countries” that buy gas russian to pay it with rubles, thus prohibiting the use of euros or dollars. However, supply will not be cut off immediately to those who do not abide by Moscow’s obligations. The Kremlin has indicated this Friday that, if it occurs, that cut will not arrive until mid-April or even until next month.

“The payment of the current supplies it is not done today, but in the second half of the month or even in early May”, explained the Russian presidential spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, speaking to the TASS news agency. That nuance does not negate the threat that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, launched yesterday after signing the decree with that obligation to pay for gas in rubles. “If these payments are not made, we will consider it a default by the buyers, with all the consequences that this entails. Nobody sells us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity either, that is, the existing contracts will be suspended”, the president remarked.

The gas giant Gazprom, controlled by the Russian state, has begun to instruct its clients on how to make such payments in rubles. The nuanced information by Peskov explains that Russian gas shipments have continued to flow this Friday with total normality.

The order signed Thursday by Putin punishes those considered “hostile countries”, a long list in which Russia includes United Statesmembers of the NATO and of the European Union (EU) and other nations that have applied economic sanctions against the Kremlin for its military invasion of Ukraine. European countries will be able to continue paying in euros and have two accounts, one in their currency and the other in rubles, and Gazprom will take care of the currency conversion.

With this new obligation, Putin seeks to revalue the ruble -which has suffered a 40% devaluation since the beginning of the war– and tighten the screws on its rivals, especially European countries such as Germany, which are heavily dependent on gas from Russia. Thus, 40% of the gas consumed in EU territory is Russian, a figure that in the German case shoots up to 80%.

Russia entered almost 10,000 million dollars in January thanks to the exports of gas and, according to the Interfax news agency, almost 6,000 of these millions corresponded to twenty countries classified as “hostile”, almost all of them members of the community club.