Kremlin rages at ‘violation’ after EU smashes Putin’s energy empire with historic new deal

He told Russia’s Interfax news agency: “This is a violation of the market price-setting, an infringement on market processes, any reference to a [price] cap is unacceptable.”

But sentiment in the EU was far more positive, although officials did note that the Netherlands and Austria abstained from the measure. Czech minister for trade and industry, Jozef Síkela, who chaired talks between energy ministers, said that while negotiations had been a huge challenge, it was finally “mission accomplished”. 

Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller has previously said that the Kremlin-controlled energy giant would consider an energy price cap as a violation of existing contracts, warning that it would end supplies flowing into Europe if it rolled out such a measure. 

He said back in October: “Such a one-sided decision is of course a violation of existing contracts, which would lead to a termination of supplies.” And the Russian President himself sent a similar warning. 

Putin said: “We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil — we will not supply anything. We would only have one thing left to do: as in the famous Russian fairy tale, we would let the wolf’s tail freeze.”

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Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1711515/putin-eu-gas-price-cap-energy-crisis