DECRYPTION – If implemented, this measure will call into question the gas contracts concluded with Europe.
The statement took Westerners by surprise. “I made the decision to implement a set of measures to switch to payment in rubles for our gas delivered to hostile countries“, announced Vladimir Putin in mid-March. A response to the sanctions decided by the West following the offensive in Ukraine, including the freezing of Russian assets. A week later, the Russian president clarified that buyers of Russian gas from “unfriendly” countries would have to pay in rubles from April 1, or risk being deprived of supplies. Buyers must therefore “open accounts in rubles in Russian banks”, and pay with them, under penalty of seeing the contracts “arrested”, indicated the head of state.
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: the EU would manage to do without a third of Russian gas, at the cost of enormous efforts
If the decision may seem technical, it affects a key area, gas remains one of the major exports of the country to the twenty-seven, which they can hardly do without. The remittances are therefore a political instrument as well as a means of supporting the national economy and financing the war.
Why this decision?…
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