Russia: “Will the West set a ceiling price for gas? Will it become a floor price”

Shortly before the European Union announced its intention this week limit Russian gas pricesRussian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to cut off supplies entirely if such restrictions are imposed, warning the West that he will “freeze like the wolf in a children’s story.”

The group of seven industrialized countries (G7) wants to impose restrictions that would prohibit insurance, financing and brokerage for oil cargoes whose price is above a yet-to-be-determined threshold. The G7 announced their intention on Saturday, and a few hours later Russia announced Because the gas flow in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume as planned.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Western countries do not understand how such measures will ultimately affect them. “The West does not understand, imposing a limit on the prices of Russian energy resources will lead to a slippery slope under its feet.”

President Putin said today that the West’s plans will fail, and that prices will rise above the artificial price ceiling they are trying to create.

“What G7 officials call a price ‘ceiling’ will become a price floor,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, wrote on his Telegram channel. “The global market is not limited to seven countries.”

The West’s attempts to punish the world’s largest supplier of natural resources, which include oil, gas, metals, coal and wood, is no easy task, especially when China, India and other countries are still happy to buy them. Selling oil and gas to Europe has been one of Russia’s main sources of foreign currency since Soviet geologists found vast oil and gas deposits in Siberia in the decades after World War II.

Russia is the world’s second oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, and the world’s leading gas exporter. Until recently, Russia was responsible for 40% of Europe’s gas imports, and 30% of oil imports.