Oct 13,2021:Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that his country is not using energy as a weapon against Europe and that Russia stands ready to help the region as its energy crisis continues.
“We are not using any weapons,” Putin told CNBC in Moscow on Wednesday, according to a translation. “Even during the hardest parts of the Cold War Russia regularly has fulfilled its contractual obligations and supplies gas to Europe,” he said.
Describing reports that Russia has withheld gas supplies to Europe, Putin called such accusations as “politically-motivated blather” and there was “nothing to support it [the idea] that we use energy as a kind of weapon.” On the contrary, he said, Russia was “expanding its supplies to Europe.”
Putin’s comments came as he participated in a panel moderated by CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Russian Energy Week. Speaking ahead of the panel, Putin said Europe should “not deal in blame-shifting” over the energy crisis in the region and that European countries had not done enough to replenish gas reserves in the summer.
“Higher gas prices in Europe are a consequence of a deficit of energy and not vice versa and that’s why we should not deal in blame shifting, this is what our partners are trying to do,” he told delegates at Russian Energy Week, an annual event in Moscow which is now in its 20th year.
