BERLIN, April 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s gas utility Gazprom has pledged to fulfill all its contract liabilities to Germany.

“We will fulfill our contract liabilities to Germany,” Gazprom’s director general Alexander Medvedev said in an interview with the electronic version of the German newspaper Handelsblatt on Sunday. He said that volumes of gas supplies were fixed in long-term contracts, so any reduction in such volumes would be punished by “big fines.” “So, there is no point in depriving ourselves of gas sales earnings,” he said.

“Gas is not a weapon, it is a commodity,” he said, adding that the supplier was interested in selling it. According to Medvedev, on the background of Ukrainian developments and fears that Russia might reduce or even stop gas supplies, Gazprom often felt the West’s “aggressive and sometimes even unfair attitudes” to itself.

Germany is able to meet its gas demand only to a mere ten percent, relying on gas supplies from foreign countries, primarily Russia and Norway.