MOSCOW, April 18. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia has never threatened to switch off gas to Ukraine, Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. 

 

 

“Bearing in mind Ukraine’s enormous debts, Russia, which sticks to the current contract, will simply switch to the advance payment regime. But Russia has never threatened to switch off gas to Ukraine,” he told the Russia-1 television channel.

“Under the contract, Russia has to demand advance payment in case of payment delays,” he noted. “Comrades in Kiev are not paying. The debt is growing bigger. They are going on consuming gas. Hence, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin said [during his Questions and Answer session]: we are waiting for one month and after that - you will get only what you have paid for.”

“It is quite fair, but Europeans so far think it unfair, since they claim that if Russia switches to the advance payment regime, it would allegedly undermine its positions as a guarantor of Europe’s energy security,” Peskov said, adding that this was what European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso wrote in his letter.

“We have many partners in Europe, who really need it [Russian gas] and we need them as buyers of our gas,” the Kremlin spokesman stressed. “Russia has always been and will always be a reliable supplier of energy sources, a reliable guarantor of energy security.

According to his words, Russia has always been and will always be a reliable guarantor of energy security. “We have many partners in Europe, who really need it [Russian gas] and we need them as buyers of our gas. Russia has always been and will always be a reliable supplier of energy sources, a reliable guarantor of energy security", he said. 

He said that there is no alternative to long-term pipeline gas supplies. “Present-day technologies have not yet invented anything more reliable and profitable as pipeline gas supplies under long-term contracts,” he said. “Spot deals, shale gas, and so on are gaining a foothold on the market and the share of these energy sources is increasing but they cannot ensure sustainable development.”

“That is why so far there is no alternative,” Peskov noted, adding that Russia was also developing its technologies. “And here I would not give in to pessimistic moods,” he said.

Apart from that, “the world is developing, not only in Europe, economies are developing in other countries and in other regions,” he said, when asked about potential buyers of Russian gas.