Mikhail Krutikhin: "Turkey has renounced Russian energy "weapons""

Analyst Mikhail Krutikhin in an interview with Nastoyaschye Vremya TV spoke about the possible use of oil and gas tools by Russia in resolving the Karabakh conflict. In particular, he is confident that Azerbaijan and Turkey have completely neutralized Moscow's attempts to give geopolitical weight to its oil and gas levers.

Russian "Streams" in the direction of Southern and Eastern Europe are no longer needed not only in Europe, but also in Turkey. And the Kremlin's hopes of turning them into an instrument of political influence failed in the same way as the idea of depriving Ukraine of gas transit failed. Tens of billions have been wasted.

“The Turks don't need Russian oil either. Oil refineries in Turkey began to refuse it, preferring Iraqi and Norwegian. So there was nothing to put pressure on the Azerbaijanis in their Karabakh policy.

Indeed, gas and oil were considered Russia's political weapons. Let's look at two countries. Azerbaijan - well, yes, indeed, once there was cooperation, there were interesting ties, and Azerbaijan largely relied on Russia, and Russia relied on Azerbaijan. So Russia could use oil and gas in some way in order to influence the policy of this country in this region.

Now everything is completely different. Azerbaijan, in cooperation with Turkey, has established a powerful export of its gas not only to Turkey, but also to Southern Europe. And in fact made the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, the so-called South Stream, absolutely unnecessary. That is, all the billions of dollars that were thrown into the construction of this direction turned out to be completely useless. And Azerbaijan and Turkey in an alliance on Russian gas and Russian oil do not depend at all. That is, Russia will in no way succeed in putting pressure on Azerbaijan in the conflict by using oil and gas weapons. It has just been reported that oil refineries in Turkey, some of which belong to the Azerbaijani company SOCAR, are refusing Russian oil, preferring Iraqi oil and Norwegian oil.

Turkey does not depend on Russia at all, it can easily get by, and close its gas and oil balance without looking back at Russia. Turkey does not need Russia in terms of oil and gas.

It would be possible to influence Armenia. They actually bought Armenia. This is the only such example of 100% success in using gas as a weapon. Armenia could not pay for Russian gas, and it paid with shares in its gas industry - both in infrastructure and in all gas companies. In fact, they bought it. And now the role of Russian gas in Armenia is extremely high. In principle, in some kind of conflict, this gas could be used to force Armenia to do what Russia wants.

You can put pressure on Armenia, where all gas supplies are controlled by Gazprom, but for what purpose? Help repel the offensive of the Azerbaijani-Turkish troops? Make you capitulate? That is, to play on the side of the attackers?"