OREANDA-NEWS Russia always fulfills long-term obligations and will not "shoot itself in the foot" by refusing profitable trade. This is how the preservation of gas supplies to Europe was explained by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with Sky News Arabia.

According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, mutually beneficial cooperation on gas supplies has been increasing since the 70s, and the European economy has been living off cheap energy sources. Currently, the European Union meets its needs with liquefied natural gas (LNG), including American, but if it wants to return to Russian supplies, Moscow will not abandon the agreements.

"Olaf Scholz said that Russia itself stopped gas supplies to Europe. Why lie? Everyone knows well how it all happened. Even under Merkel, the United States forced Germany not to turn on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, to use more expensive American LNG. <...> Despite the fact that three lines of the Nord Streams were blown up, the pipeline system remains, including through Ukraine, through Turkey, through The Black Sea. If it's mutually beneficial, why shoot yourself in the foot?" — said Lavrov.

According to Boris Marcinkevich, editor-in-chief of the analytical online magazine Geoenergetics, Europe's refusal of Russian gas flowing through Ukraine is quite acceptable if the industry continues to collapse. Speaking about the fact that against the background of declining demand from production, "you can save on gas and give up anything," he cited the example of the post-Soviet Baltic States, whose countries "crushed large-scale industry and drove a third of the population far away."