Dec. 31 () –
Russian President Vladimir Putin published a decree on Friday afternoon allowing Russian natural gas suppliers to settle their debts with “non-friendly countries” in foreign currencies.
The decree specifies that doubt settlements can be made in foreign currency, using a special account opened by an authorized bank, and that it will not be necessary to pay rubles, as the Kremlin had determined in early April, TASS has reported.
However, the decree only refers to the “repayment of the foreign buyer’s debt” without any provision for resuming natural gas supplies from Russia to “non-friendly countries”.
Since April 1, countries “not friends” of Russia, such as members of the European Union or the United States, could only pay for Russian gas in rubles, according to the aforementioned agency.
However, taking into account the currency of the contracts (which are usually dollars and euros), Moscow made a concession to its counterparties: clients would have to transfer money in foreign currencies to Gazprombank, which would buy rubles on exchanges and transfer them to special ruble accounts.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, warned the companies that buy gas from Russia that if they gave in to the “blackmail” of the Kremlin to pay in rubles for the supply when it is not provided for in their purchase contracts, it would mean “a violation of the sanctions that the European Union imposes on the Vladimir Putin regime” and that could have legal consequences for the companies.
Later, the European Commission allowed companies to continue paying for Russian gas by opening bank accounts for payments in the currency stipulated in the contracts.
