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Putin threatens to ‘freeze’ west by cutting gas and oil supplies if price caps imposed
Speaking at an economic forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off energy supplies if price caps are imposed on Russia’s oil and gas exports.
The Russian leader described European calls for a price cap on Russian gas as “stupid” and said they would lead to higher global prices and economic problems in Europe.
Last week, G7 countries agreed on a plan to put a ceiling on Russian oil prices in an attempt to stem the flow of funds into the Kremlin’s war coffers.
Russia would walk away from its supply contracts if the west went ahead with its plans, Putin said.
The Russian president said:
Will there be any political decisions that contradict the contracts? Yes, we won’t fulfill them. We will not supply anything at all if it contradicts our interests.
He added:
We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil – we will not supply anything.
Russia “would only have one thing left to do”, Putin said.
As in the famous Russian fairytale, we would sentence the wolf’s tail to be frozen.
He said Germany and western countries themselves were to blame for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline not being operational and that Ukraine and Poland decided on their own to switch off other gas routes into Europe.
He added:
Nord Steam 1 is practically closed now.
Key events
Ukraine military claims responsibility for series of strikes in Crimea, including Saki
Ukraine’s top military chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, has claimed responsibility for a series of strikes on Russian airbases in Crimea.
In an article published by Ukrinform, a state news agency, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian army said the strikes used missiles or rockets and that 10 warplanes were destroyed. The attacks he took responsibility for included the devastating August strike on the Saki military facility, reports Reuters.
EU executive lays out five-point plan in response to energy crisis
Jennifer Rankin
The head of the EU executive, has set out plans for windfall taxes, mandatory electricity savings and a cap on the price of Russian gas to limit Kremlin revenues used to finance the “atrocious” war in Ukraine.
Ursula von der Leyen outlined a five-point plan in response to an energy price crisis, driven by the Russian shutdown of the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline but exacerbated by the climate crisis and lingering effects of the Covid pandemic.
Low-carbon energy companies, renewable and nuclear suppliers that have reaped “enormous revenues … they never dreamed of” from generating electricity will face a windfall tax, Von der Leyen said, with proceeds earmarked to help domestic consumers and companies pay “astronomical” bills.
Under EU energy rules, the price of electricity is determined by the cost of the most expensive fuel, usually gas, rather than cheaper renewables and nuclear power. As a result of all-time-high gas prices, low-carbon electricity generators have been rewarded with a big increase in income.
“These revenues do not reflect their production costs,” Von der Leyen said. “So it is now time for the consumers to benefit from the low costs of low-carbon sources.” The commission, she said, proposed “to re-channel these unexpected profits” to allow member states to support vulnerable households and companies.
Ukraine’s nuclear chief has said he would support the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP).
Petro Kotyn, the head of Ukraine’s nuclear agency Energoatom, said in remarks broadcast by Ukrainian TV:
One of the ways to create a security zone at the ZNPP could be to set up a peacekeeping contingent there and withdraw Russian troops.
Kotyn’s remarks came a day after the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for a demilitarised zone around the nuclear plant, involving the withdrawal of Russian occupying troops and the agreement of Ukrainian forces not to move in.
Patrick Wintour
Former UK defence secretary Michael Fallon clashed with the French president Emmanuel Macron saying he did not understand those who say that Russian president Vladimir Putin should not be left humiliated at the end of the Ukraine war.
Macron has at times called for Putin not to win, but also not to be humiliated. But Fallon, speaking at an economic forum in Poland, said:
I do not understand people that say that Putin must not be humiliated by failure. He needs to fail and to be humiliated if we are not to concede he has any kind of legitimate right to be any part of Ukraine. If we weaken now by allowing Russia to continue along this path it seems the Baltic States, Moldova, Georgia, the West Balkans – all of them – will be vulnerable in the future.
Fallon was defence secretary from 2014 and 2017 in the wake of the Russian-led incursion into Ukraine, and in his remarks described the West’s response at the time as feeble.
He also called for the West to consider providing Ukraine with a modern air defence iron dome as a permanent form of security against future Russian attacks, possibly with a Polish contribution.
Describing the state of the military counter-offensive inside Ukraine as “at a delicate stage”, he said the level of sanctions against Russia should not only be stepped up, but enforced since some countries were allowing Russian oil to be retankered and relabelled in international customs.
He added:
Politicians need to better and more fully explain the sacrifice that is going to be required not just in the field of energy but in terms of fiscal transfers. This is a war not just of territory but of principle.
Fallon also called for the Russian middle class to be banned from travelling across Europe:
Young Russians can enjoy the beaches of the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea whereas every young Ukrainians has in one way or another to defend their country. Even in an autocratic regime where the media is controlled, you cannot exempt the Russian population from proper responsibility for what is being done in their name.
He also revealed his deep exasperation with Europe’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. He said Putin noticed the west’s weak response to the Maidan in 2004, when the European Union proved itself wholly unable to defend a fragile democracy.
Putin noticed again when Europe applied only limited sanctions after the seizure of Crimea, excluding oil and gas, and unbelievably allowing 10 European countries to honour their existing arms contracts to Russia supplying weapons that even today are being used against Ukraine.
Above all, Putin noted the lack of a clear path for Nato and EU membership, Fallon said.
He said Poland by contrast recognised what Putin represented long before the rest of Europe, and called on the UK to build its ad hoc defence links with Poland and Ukraine in the future.
Putin to hold ‘serious’ meeting with China’s Xi Jinping next week, says official
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan next week, according to a Russian official.
The pair plan to meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on 15-16 September, Russia’s ambassador to China Andrei Denisov told reporters.
Denisov was quoted by Russian state-run news agency Tass as saying:
We are actively preparing for it.
It would the first face-to-face between the two leaders since Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February.
It would also be the Chinese leader’s first overseas trip since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Xi has only left mainland China once since the start of the pandemic, to make a one-day visit to Hong Kong.
The summit “promises to be interesting”, Denisov was also cited as saying. He added:
I do not want to say that online summits are not full-fledged, but still, direct communication between leaders is a different quality of discussion … We are planning a serious, full-fledged meeting of our leaders with a detailed agenda, which we are now, in fact, working on with our Chinese partners.
When asked about the trip, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said he had “nothing to offer” and did not provide any information.
Germany is well placed to “survive” the winter despite turmoil in the energy markets, its chancellor Olaf Scholz has said.
Scholz vowed that Germany will keep moving “at great speed” to shed its reliance on Russia for power, in a speech to parliament that was heavily critical of his predecessor chancellor Angela Merkel’s energy policies.
Germany has worked effectively to fill up its gas storage tanks and by speeding up the building of terminals to receive liquefied natural gas, Scholz said. The gas reserves, currently over 86% capacity, will be used to heat homes, generate electricity and power industry.
He added:
Because we started so early, when it wasn’t even such a big awareness of the problem in Germany, we are now in a situation that we can head into the winter courageously and bravely – our country can survive.
He said he was working to seal new cooperation with close European partners in order to “guarantee a secure energy supply” for the country.
We have spoken with our friends on the west European coast, with the Netherlands and Belgium for them to expand (LNG) terminals and pipeline capacities with France which will for the first time deliver gas to us.
Vladimir Putin has threatened to cut off energy supplies if price caps are imposed on Russia’s oil and gas exports.
Speaking at an economic forum in Vladivostok in Russia’s far east, the president said Russia “will not supply anything at all if it contradicts our interests … We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil – we will not supply anything.”
A Ukrainian presidential adviser has described Russian complaints about a landmark deal allowing Ukraine to export grain from ports in the Black Sea as “flabbergasting”.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Reuters:
The agreements signed in Istanbul … concern only one issue, and that is the transfer of cargo ships through the Black Sea.
He added:
Russia can’t dictate where Ukraine should send its grain, and Ukraine doesn’t dictate the same to Russia.
Russia’s foreign ministry has announced sanctions against a number of European military leaders and security figures in response to what Moscow described as the west’s “unfriendly anti-Russian” policy.
In a statement, it said it was banning a number of the European military leaders, senior security figures and representatives of weapons companies from entering Russia.
The ministry did not name the individuals.
Putin threatens to ‘freeze’ west by cutting gas and oil supplies if price caps imposed
Speaking at an economic forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off energy supplies if price caps are imposed on Russia’s oil and gas exports.
The Russian leader described European calls for a price cap on Russian gas as “stupid” and said they would lead to higher global prices and economic problems in Europe.
Last week, G7 countries agreed on a plan to put a ceiling on Russian oil prices in an attempt to stem the flow of funds into the Kremlin’s war coffers.
Russia would walk away from its supply contracts if the west went ahead with its plans, Putin said.
The Russian president said:
Will there be any political decisions that contradict the contracts? Yes, we won’t fulfill them. We will not supply anything at all if it contradicts our interests.
He added:
We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil – we will not supply anything.
Russia “would only have one thing left to do”, Putin said.
As in the famous Russian fairytale, we would sentence the wolf’s tail to be frozen.
He said Germany and western countries themselves were to blame for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline not being operational and that Ukraine and Poland decided on their own to switch off other gas routes into Europe.
He added:
Nord Steam 1 is practically closed now.
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