Slovakia is Ready to Pay in Rubles

Slovakia has acceded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands, and agreed to pay for its natural gas imports in rubles. With 85% of its gas supply coming from Russia, what choice did it have?

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Swiss daily 20 Minuten:

Slovakia gives in — “if necessary, we pay in rubles” Fearing that the economy could be damaged, Slovakia wants to accept Russian payment terms.

That’s what it’s about

1.   Slovakia gets 85 percent of its gas from Russia.
2.   The country would rather give in than risk damage.
3.   “The gas must not be turned off,” says Deputy Prime Minister Richard Sulik.
 

Slovakia’s economics minister and deputy prime minister, Richard Sulik, would rather accept Russian terms of payment for gas imports than damage his own economy. On public television he said on Sunday: “The gas must not be turned off. That’s why I say, even if that may seem like a too pragmatic position to some: if the condition is to pay in rubles, then we pay in rubles.” Slovak industry cannot completely do without Russian gas, Sulik explained.

85 percent of the gas supply comes from Russia

Sulik condemned Russia’s requirement to pay for gas imports in rubles as a violation of existing treaties. However, he pointed out that Slovakia currently gets 85 percent of its gas needs from Russia. Work is being done to reduce this dependency, among other things by importing liquefied gas. However, it will take years before the technical prerequisites are in place to completely replace Russian gas, explained Sulik, who is also party leader of the liberal second-largest governing party, SaS.

Until 2009, all of Slovakia’s gas imports came from Russia and flowed into the country via Ukraine. The fact that these imports were temporarily interrupted in 2009 by a Russian-Ukrainian trade dispute came as a shock. As a consequence, the then-social democratic government provided an alternative solution that made it possible for part of the required gas to flow from the Czech Republic. Later Slovakia also delivered its imported gas to Ukraine, thereby helping the neighboring country to circumvent a Russian supply freeze.

Afterword from the translator:

It’s always charming to see the way globalization works smoothly when there’s a fight in the house. But I guess when one wants to create a One-World Dictatorship, one has to make everyone dependent on the other. Where would all these Klaus Schwab and George Soros types be if each and every country could see to their own needs first with the resources they have and through real innovation?

It’s always the same with these “Empires”. South African Teak to India, Burmese Teak to South Africa for the Railway, New Zealand Lamb to South Africa and South African Lamb to Australia and Australian Lamb to the UK and such nonsense, just to keep the prices high, the select few filthy rich, and the little people under the boot-heel.

16 thoughts on “Slovakia is Ready to Pay in Rubles

  1. I still remember “the great gasification” – in the early 1990’s, at least in my part of Czechoslovakia, there was a huge push to push everybody on gas – from russia – because “ecology” – for we are rich in coal but not gas or oil, and coal stinks when you use it for house heating…

    In any way: I like the afterword from the translator, because it’s true: Just last month – a ship with coal from Australia arrived to the Czech republic (an Elbe river ship). A coal from Australia! For the blast furnaces in Ostrava!

    For those who don’t know, Ostrava is the “Steel heart of central EU” – a region exeedingly rich in coal. But – coal from Ostrava is not ECO, so the EU stopped the mining. But now we have to get coal from down under 🙂

    *

    Well, I am certainly glad that I heat by wood. last year I bought a lorry of firewood, 270CZK for cubic meter. I checked the price now – 750CZK per cubic meter. It’s still manageable but quite some increase, year to year.

    • @ Barn Swallow

      Re: “For those who don’t know, Ostrava is the “Steel heart of central EU” – a region exeedingly rich in coal. But – coal from Ostrava is not ECO, so the EU stopped the mining. But now we have to get coal from down under 🙂”

      I am not speaking about you, but Europeans as a whole: When are they going to wake up to the fact that the European Union is a globalist institution actively working to dismantle their civilization and the nations within it?

      Re: “Well, I am certainly glad that I heat by wood. last year I bought a lorry of firewood, 270CZK for cubic meter. I checked the price now – 750CZK per cubic meter. It’s still manageable but quite some increase, year to year.”

      A Danish relative of mine – I am half-Danish as my mom is a Dane and a naturalized American – has his home heated and powered by coffee hulls discarded by a local coffee factory nearby. He gets them for virtually nothing and makes so much electricity that he can sell some back to the power company.

      My mother-in-law is from a Czech background, and I would love to visit your nation sometime. It looks to be a beautiful country with many sites to recommend it.

      But getting back to energy, it sounds just like the EU to prohibit member nations from developing domestic sources of coal, instead demanding that these nations import it from someplace halfway around the world, and probably at a much higher cost. It’s crazy, it really is.

      • Georgiaboy61: The best thing that smaller EU members could do for themselves is to get out of the EU. For a country to shun the use of its own natural resources is nuts.

      • Georgiaboy61 – Yea I suppose that Bohemia is a nice place, a small model of the whole world as we say: We have mountains, but not so big, lakes – but not so big, cities – but not too big… etc. Very diverse landscape, covered with castles and old towns. Very different from the scandinavian countries, where Norway is rocks and rocks, Sweden is trees and forrests, and Danmark is a flat sand dune in the Baltic sea.

        But getting back to energy – I really don’t know what the EU bureaucrats are thinking, but they probably think that meat is made in the supermarket and water comes from the water tap. That they are completely stupid is the better option. The other option is – that the EU energy policy is deliberately made to make Europeans poor. Or – quite possibly, it is the combination of both.

    • Yes, that area is amazingly rich in coal, which the EU isn’t so keen on…

      See also the Polish-Czech-EU dispute over the Turów power plant, which culminated in a decision by the EU court to fine Poland 500,000 Euros, for every day that the plant operates.

      Although now, I think there was some sort of an agreement made.

      • Yea, to be honest, I believe that the Czechs on the other side of the border just wanted a cut from the nice profits Poland is making by that coal mine 🙂

        …although they say that the mine caused the ground water level to go down by several meters and buildings cracked etc… I guess its just your normal quarrel between the neighbors over who’s are the apples from the branch that goes over the fence?

        In any way, I support coal mining. And I support Poland and every EU country that agrees with coal mining.

        Don’t think that the Prague goverment represents Czech people though: Czech Republic is an occupied country, a protectorate of the fourth reich, and as with everything else, 90% of Czechs hate the eco-madness, but the Prague government supports it, of course, against the will of the people, proving once again that we do not have a democracy.

    • Indeed, the whole world is going slowly mad.
      When will the EU and the Green goblins decide that the smoke from the burning wood in the tile stoves and fireplaces and kitchen stoves are a clear and present danger to the ‘green revolution’. I keep waiting for the day when the EU proclaims wood to be outlawed for home heating.

      • I am truly worried that that is the plan: To take wood burning stoves from the people. The God of this world, Jupiter, had done it once: He took fire away from mankind, and mankind became most miserable in its history; Prometheus had to come and give the fire back to the people. I believe that we might be repeating that scenario.

        However – I don’t think it is possible to take the wood burning from the people in eastern Europe: Too many people rely on wood burning over here. Maybe in a generation or two, but not now.

        But – making fire illegal could be done in some parts of western EU now already, I believe.

        https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18188379.wood-burning-stoves-face-axe-scots-pollution-death-toll-revealed/

    • australia, which is not dependent at all from russian gas pipeline, is selling coal at a much increased price to a country that is far away (think at the pollution created just to transfer by ship all that amount of coal from australia to check republic) which could be coal independent by its own production but it is not because of “ecology”; australia is one of the 5 eyes so it all makes sense…

  2. I’m an uninterested party in European wars. But I do have apathy for any nation totally dependent on another for its survival, a prime example is the US-Chinese arrangement.

  3. All of Europe is learning the hard way, about the dangers of dependence on a single energy source.

    Already in the 1970s there was a sinilar issue with oil imports from the Arab world. And now, the situation is repeating with Russia. The only sensible solution is to diversify – and increase Europe’s own production.

    But Britain – with some of the largest shale gas reserves in the world – faced large “environmental” opposition, culminating in a court decision to seal the shale gas extraction sites forever, with concrete.

    Furthermore, Germany did not build any liquid gas terminals – so confident were they, of Russia being a reliable, stable partner. And most of Western Europe went down the path of “green energy”, forgetting that something is also needed, for when there’s little sun or wind… With that something being, most often, gas turbines.

    So now, Putin is very happy to have Europe on its knees. As are the Arabs.

    • I’m hardly an expert, but I understand that extracting shale gas in the UK would cause problems which don’t exist in the US.

  4. There is something called Coal gasification. We could turn our coal into gas.
    Oops, sorry, we Germans stopped digging for coal, we buy it from Russia. So sorry!

    I have one question: Why does Putin not pull the plug, e.g. dont sell anything.
    All the european countries get no coal, gas, oil etc.
    HHow long would it be before we had total breakdown? A few days?
    According to the hierarchy of needs we can only care if our bellies are full, our homes are warm.
    Putin could end the involvement of the West in one stroke.
    Why does he not?
    (Yes, I will suffer too, but better an end with terror than a terror without end)

  5. “Why does he not?”
    I still think that Putin is part of the plan too, even if in a complementary way to the western oligarchs of WEF, Schwabs, Soros, Rothschild and others. He was the first to launch the covid vax in august 2020 (actually demonstrated to be fully in the same narrative). Putin goals are not exactly the great reset and the cancer culture (which are just the same thing, cancel and reset are almost synonyms), but the confrontation with him is used to accelerate in this direction. You cannot achieve these results, if the process is too fast, so they need to take more time. Also we must not forget than before the plandemic, what today is often called like “normalcy”, was comprising a steady process of mass migration with multiculturalist operation to transform many western “countries” into zombified wasteland.

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