EU and Russia in stand-off over rouble payments for gas

Financial Times/Harry Dempsey, Neil Hume, Natassia Astrasheuskaya, and Sarah White/3-29-2022

Gas pipelines from Russia to Europe • • • Click to enlarge

“Payments will be accepted in roubles only. Companies need to understand the changed market situation, the absolutely new reality that has emerged amid the economic war waged on Russia.” – Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson

USAGOLD note 1: Perhaps the most important volley fired thus far in the new economic war. Who will blink first? This was the lead article in yesterday’s Financial Times. The other half of this equation is that Russia has threatened to pay its debts in roubles. Thus far, those payments have been made in other currencies, principally euros and US dollars.

USAGOLD note 2: Putin has decreed that “foreign buyers must pay in roubles for Russian gas from April 1, and contracts would be halted if these payments were not made,” according to a Reuters report this morning.

Image attribution: Samuel Bailey ([email protected]), CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons