ST. PETERSBURG, June 4. /TASS/. Russia could be pumping much more gas via Ukraine but Kiev is creating obstacles preventing this, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.
"First, we have a contract with Ukraine on the transit of our gas. In the next five years, we will pump up to 40 billion cubic meters a year. At the best times, we used to pump up to 200 billion, I think," he told a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. "If we had normal relations and pumped the bulk of the gas via Ukraine, but it is linked with problems." He explained that the problem was Kiev’s monopolistic position that made it possible for it to administer prices on both Russian gas and its transit.
"The problems are not even political, they are economic. Because a monopoly on gas transit gives grounds for an illusion that transit prices could be sent skyrocketing, on the one hand, and that the prices Ukraine is paying for gas under direct contracts with Russia could be abated as much as possible, on the other hand. Monopoly is bad, this is the problem," he stressed.
Commenting on Kiev’s negative position on the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, the Russian leader said Ukraine’s gas transport system could be used even after the current transit contract expired. "We now pay them (Ukraine - TASS) 1.5 billion US dollars a year for gas transit. They might have been paid three, four, even five billion but they have wrecked everything with their own hands," he noted. "Gas supplies to Europe may go up by 50 billion [cubic meters] within the next ten years. There is a possibility to use Ukraine’s gas transport system in the future, even after our current contract expires. Everything is possible and we are ready for it and want it but goodwill from our Ukrainian partners is needed."
Commenting on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s words that Ukraine would be unable to maintain its army without the funds it was receiving from the transit of Russian natural gas across its territory, Putin noted that was not obliged to provide sustenance to all. "Do you think that we must feed everybody? We don’t have any obligation whatsoever to provide feed everybody," Putin remarked, adding that Kiev should better think how to spend the gas transit money to improve the country’s economy rather than fund a forceful solution to the conflict in Donbass.
Nord Stream 2 project
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 the economic zones and territorial water of five countries, namely Russia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.
From the very begging of the pipeline construction Ukraine has been insisting it be stopped as it posed a threat to its interests. The situation did not change even after the signing of a new five-year gas transit contract with Russia in 2019.
Despite the repeated statements of the project participants about its purely economic nature, the United States imposed sanctions and works under the project were suspended in December 2019. However, pipe laying was later resumed by Russia, which deployed two pipe-laying vessels - the Academician Chersky and the Fortuna.
In late May, US President Joe Biden admitted that Nord Stream 2 construction was practically completed and further sanctions against it would be counterproductive for the country’s relations with Europe.
On Friday, the Russian president told a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that the construction of one Nord Stream 2 line was over and the second one would be completed in 1.5-2 months.