The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, backs down on his demand to ask for payment in rubles to sell Russian gas. In a telephone conversation with the German Chancellor, Olaf ScholzPutin would have confirmed that European countries will be able to continue paying in euros.
The Russian leader had announced a week ago that “hostile countries” should assume payment for energy from Russia in rubles, instead of euros or dollars. However, Putin “stressed in the conversation that nothing will change for European contract partners,” confirmed German government representative Steffen Hebestreit.
“Payments will continue to be made in euros and will be transferred as usual to Gazprom’s bank, which is not affected by the sanctions,” he added, explaining that the entity will then convert them to rubles.
Quite a relief for Germany, that 55% of the gas it consumes comes from Russia. And it is that, in view of things getting worse, since the European Union had refused to pay in rubles, the German government – also Austria – declared this Wednesday the “early warning” level of its energy emergency plan at the risk of a possible cut in the supply of Russian gas. This alert is the first of three and does not yet involve state intervention to ration supply, but, according to Financial Timesit was not ruled out if the crisis worsened.
“We must increase precautionary measures to be prepared for an escalation by Russia. With the declaration of the early warning level, a crisis team has been created,” said German Economy Minister Robert Habeck.
The alarm has been of such magnitude that the main German unions were already putting themselves in the worst by assuring that the imposition in the short term of an embargo on the supply of energy from Russia would not only carry the risk of closures and dismissals in Germany, but also of the “collapse” of industrial production chains in Europe.
In a joint statement, the German industrial unions IG Metall, IG BCE and IG BAU, had called on the Government to take short-term measures, including liquidity support and avoiding an energy embargo on Russia, in addition to introducing changes in the medium and long term. in energy policy to cushion the burden on particularly energy-intensive sectors and thus secure employment.
In this way, the unions had warned of the social and economic consequences of imposing an embargo on Russian energy imports and have called on Berlin to avoid a short-term supply interruption.
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