The threat has not yet been countersigned by the Kremlin, but should not be underestimated: “If enemy countries don’t pay for supplies in rubles, Russia will turn off the gas taps.” That of parliamentarian Ivan Abramov is currently an isolated voice. However, it was picked up by the Ria Novosti agency, perhaps Vladimir Putin’s favorite megaphone. And it’s a rumor echoing as more and more bricks are laid wall to wall between Moscow and the G7.
The socalled currency wars have always existed, almost always hidden and never openly explained. It is the most basic weapon to affect the trade balance by artificially changing exchange rates. This has its peculiarity in that it is an appendage of a real war, in which the ruble is forcibly called up in a struggle in which no one wants to give up. Certainly not Tsar Vlad, who, having ventured into uncharted currency territory with the intention of supporting his own currency without calculating the consequences (gas prices fell 3.6% to 97.6 euros in Amsterdam yesterday), he does not take a step back, but takes a step forward: by April 1, he expects that the methane contracts will be fulfilled with the payment of rubles. And if Europe is not there, you know that “we will not do charity,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dryly.
The answer came from Robert Habeck, Federal Minister of Economics and rotating President of the organization of the seven major industrial countries. And it can only be one: currency exchange is a clear unilateral violation of existing contracts and this means that payment in rubles is simply “unacceptable. Putin’s attempt to divide us is obvious, but he’s the one with his back against the wall.”
A few more days and we’ll know if the Russian president means business or if he’s just a player bluff in a game where everyone risks losing. Starting with Russia. The disruption in supplies would result in the evaporation of the roughly $7 billion Gazprom collects from Europe every month.
Certainly an enormous loss and greater than that which would be incurred by the treasury in the form of higher import costs if the counterparties agreed to pay for the purchased methane in rubles. But Moscow is already resorting to a last resort in an attempt to circumvent sanctions. One of them, as Bloomberg reveals, is the blackout of oil tankers: 33 of these sea giants switched off onboard systems that report positions in order to make routes and destinations untraceable last week. No one knows where these barrels went.
But it is equally obvious that even a partial cutoff in gas supplies would have a significant impact on the old continent, missing a sizable slice of a 160 billion cubic meter pie, as much as Russia supplies each year. With a total suspension, the cake would disappear. And it wouldn’t be easy to find another. Certainly liquefied gas imports would not cover the deficit and slide dangerously towards a 1970s energy shock. At this point, a severe recession could not be ruled out. However, Standard & Poor’s is currently ruling out the latter hypothesis “thanks to the strong momentum of the recovery and sufficient liquidity reserves”. However, the rating agency has lowered its growth estimates for the current year to 3.3% from 4.4% and warns that “the uncertainty of our forecasts is higher than usual, with risks on the downside”.