A top European Union diplomat has said that Moscow is using natural gas to intimidate Moldova, as the former Soviet republic’s prime minister has said the country cannot afford the prices now offered by Russia.
According to a Reuters report, Moldova’s gas contract with Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP.MM) expired at the end of September. Moldovan pro-European Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita told the international news agency that Gazprom did not offer the new government its traditional annual contract, but instead tripled its price.
The Kremlin denied that the Russian company was using the gas talks to try to extract political concessions, but EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell rejected that argument.
“Globally, price increases around the world are not a consequence of increased gas supply, but in the case of Moldova, yes,” Borrell told a news conference with Gavrilita in Brussels.
Gavrilita told Reuters in an interview that Gazprom had raised its long-term price for Moldova to $ 790 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, from about $ 250.
“The price increase for Moldova is just extremely strong. It has tripled and will quadruple if we buy everything in the spot market. The country can not afford it financially, politically, economically or socially,” Gavrilita said.
Moldova is ruled by the pro-Western government of President Maia Sandu, which defeated Moscow-backed Igor Dodon in elections last November. The country was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union and is at the center of a political tug-of-war of influence between Russia and the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Reuters
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