This list includes MVM (Hungary), VNG, RWE and Uniper (Germany), Engie (France), Eni (Italy), OMV (Austria), CEZ (Czech Republic), SPP (Slovakia), Geoplin (Slovenia), DEPA Commerce, Mytilineos and Prometheus Gas (Greece).
“Many companies continued to pay Gazprom by opening accounts in euros or dollars at Gazprombank. It is not clear whether they used ruble accounts to pay,” the Kyiv School of Economics noted.
Nine gas companies from the European Union, including those from the Netherlands, Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, and the Baltic countries, refused to pay Russia for gas in rubles, as demanded in Moscow.
“However, the largest buyers (including in Italy and Germany, only one company from Germany refused to pay in rubles) began to pay under the new scheme. Payment mechanisms are not fully known to the public and it is not clear whether companies open accounts in rubles, which, according to Commission of the EU, would mean a violation of the sanctions,” the KSE explained.
March 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the decision to transfer payment for Russian gas supplies to “unfriendly” countries in Russian rubles. The Kremlin added that will not supply gas to countries that have refused to pay in rubles.
After the introduction of sanctions against the Russian Federation, the Russian authorities called all EU countries, the United States, Great Britain, Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine and a number of other states “unfriendly”.
G7 countries (USA, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada) refused to pay in rubles for gas. Also opposed European Union and some of its members, in particular Poland and Slovenia.
However, on May 12, Bloomberg reported, citing a source, that 20 companies from Europe have already opened accounts to pay for gas supplies in rubles from Russia, another 14 Gazprom clients requested documents to open an account in Russian currency.
At the end of April, Gazprom reported that completely suspended gas supplies to Bulgargaz (Bulgaria) and PGNiG (Poland) “due to non-payment in rubles”, in accordance with Putin’s decree of March 31. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called the company’s statement another attempt at blackmail EU from the Russian side. According to her, Poland and Bulgaria already receive gas from EU neighbors.
May 21 Russia stopped gas supplies to FinlandMarch 31 – companies from the Netherlands GasTerrafrom June 1 – Danish company Ørsted.
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