Russia is still winning the “Small Gas War”

Gazprom today completely stopped gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria. Both countries refused to pay for energy in rubles. According to previously concluded contracts, the companies Bulgargaz (Bulgaria) and PGNiG (Poland) were supposed to pay for gas by April 26.

Both countries are transit countries, so Gazprom warned that if Bulgaria and Poland take unauthorized gas from transit volumes, it will reduce supplies for transit by this volume.

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“The right decision, State Duma deputies support it. Bulgaria and Poland had the opportunity to take advantage of our President’s offer to pay for natural gas in rubles. The mechanism is defined. The leaders of these countries did not want to. Let them explain to their citizens how they will resolve the situation and whose interests they were guided by when making such a decision. It is necessary to do the same in relation to other countries that are unfriendly to us,” Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Volodin welcomed Gazprom’s decision in his Telegram channel.

Poland and Bulgaria reacted differently to the gas valve being turned off. Bulgarian Prime Minister Kirill Petkov called it “blackmail.” Russian gas covers 90% of the country's needs, and the government has already promised its consumers that there will be no restrictions.

The Polish government's spokesman for strategic energy infrastructure, Piotr Naimski, admitted that his country will no longer buy Russian gas. However, at the same time, the application for the reverse of gas to Poland from Germany via the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline has today increased 5 times, as follows from the data of the German operator. But in the opposite direction it will obviously not be Russian.

“Poland may still be nervous about the cessation of gas supplies from Gazprom - it has its own gas pipelines (reverse) and US promises to help with LNG. But Bulgaria has nothing strategically important. There is an appendix from the Turkish Stream and intra/European networks in which dealers rather than gas suppliers reign, which means high gas prices, with markups and supply disruptions. Do you know what it looks like in real life? The US eats the EU as a whole, strong EU countries eat weak EU countries. And Gazprom is just snacking on them,” political scientist Marat Bashirov comments on the situation.

The shutdown effect was not long in coming. Gas prices exceeded $1300 today at the opening of trading in Europe, rising 17%. The Greek Prime Minister convenes an emergency meeting on energy. Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Petr Fial stated that it is impossible to immediately refuse gas from the Russian Federation; the country’s dependence on it is 90%.

_{According to Bloomberg, 10 gas buyers from Europe have already opened accounts with Gazprombank, four of them have already made payments for gas according to the Russian scheme.}

The bearer of ultimatums to the Kremlin, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, made some curious comments. First, he stated at a press conference that the Austrian oil and gas company OMV accepted the conditions of the Russian side to pay for the supplied gas in rubles. But a few hours later he denied this information on social networks, since “Austria strictly adheres to the jointly agreed EU sanctions.”

The point here seems to be the cunning of the scheme proposed by Moscow: the Europeans will fix the price of gas in euros, transfer them to Gazprombank and convert them into rubles. This scheme, as Bloomberg reports, was also adopted by the German concern Uniper.

But small but proud Slovakia will continue to pay for gas from Russia in euros, said Prime Minister Eduard Heger. There is deceit here too. The EU will temporarily increase purchases of Russian gas through countries willing to pay in rubles to compensate for the interruption of supplies to Poland and Bulgaria.

“European countries are beginning to be clearly divided into those who gain from a constructive approach to relations with Russia, and those who lose from Russophobia. This is a real foreign policy result, but as for what image Russia has abroad... when you take off your head, you don’t cry over your hair. Nobody cares about the positive image of Russia now. There’s no time for him,” writes political scientist Alexander Nosovich.

_{“The Little Gas War begins. And the Great Gas War will begin after the Little one, and as a result it will affect Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands,” says his colleague Sergei Markov.}