ST. PETERSBURG, June 4. /TASS/. Gas supplies via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline are more expedient from the economic point of view than transit across several countries and the talk about any political risks is nothing but a "bad propaganda," Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.
"There are no country-related political risks. There are no fees for transit. It will be more economically expedient. It means that the end client in Germany <…> will have to pay less than in the case of the transit across several countries. It is simply more viable economically. It has been said a hundred of times but people’s heads are still stuffed with bad propaganda that this is a political project aiming to bypass someone and so on," he told a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
According to the Russian president, Nords Stream 2 is an economically yielding commercial project. "I would like to say it once again. I have told that many times and I would like to stress that it is a purely economic, commercial project. Those who think that it is meant to bypass some other parasitizing parties, they are wrong - this thesis is not true. Because the route from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea is shorter than the one via European nations - Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria, etc. It is shorter and cheaper," Putin stressed.
Nord Stream 2 is an international project for the construction of a gas pipeline that will run across the bottom of the Baltic Sea from the Russian coast to Germany bypassing transit states, such as Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and other Eastern European and Baltic countries.
The new 1,230 kilometer pipeline, basically following the same route as Nord Stream, traverses economic zones and territorial water of five countries, namely Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.