Russia to decide on gas deliveries via Ukraine based on demand in EU

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) – Russia will make a decision about the extension of an agreement on gas deliveries to Europe via Ukraine depending on the demand in the EU, a Russian senior diplomat said on Saturday.

Speaking in an interview with the Russian state news agency RIA, Dmitry Birichevsky, the director of the Foreign Ministry Department for Economic Cooperation, pointed out that the EU in March 2022 declared the intention to gradually stop buying Russian energy.

"More recently, statements were heard from Kyiv about its disinterest in extending the transit contract," he noted, adding that if Ukraine refuses to extend the agreement that ends in 2024, it will lose the income it gets for transit.

Birichevsky said there are alternative routes for deliveries of Russian gas to Europe, including via Türkiye through the Blue Stream and TurkStream gas pipelines.

Asked about the possibility of an exchange of frozen assets between Moscow and the West, the diplomat said the Western companies whose assets are blocked in Russia are interested in such a swap.

"We are ready for any development of the situation with frozen assets. It seems that the mutual exchange scheme proposed by the Russian side could be of interest to Western contractors. However, signals from Brussels can hardly be called optimistic," he emphasized.

The West has frozen hundreds of billions of Russian assets in response to Moscow's "special military operation" in Ukraine that started in February 2022.

Turning to Egypt's cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Council, Birichevsky said that the project of an agreement on a free trade zone is "at an advanced stage of readiness," and "all sides eye to finalize the negotiating process."