The day before, Gazprom stopped the extraction and injection of gas into this largest reservoir in Europe. At the end of March, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected Moscow's demand to convert gas wholesale into Russian rubles.
According to RIA Novosti, all operations at Reden stopped on the morning of April 1, when Russian President Vladimir Putin 's decree on the transfer of gas contracts "with unfriendly countries" into rubles came into force.
In the meantime, as previously reported by the German media, Olaf Scholz said that Berlin would not pay for gas in Russian currency. In his opinion, the current contracts between buyers and suppliers of Russian gas do not provide for this. Payment can only be made in euros or dollars, the German leader believes.
According to experts, the Kremlin's tough decision to pay in rubles was a response to the introduction of several packages of anti-Russian sanctions by the West against Russia. Such a move, economists in Moscow say, would allow Putin to strengthen the national currency and thus stabilize the country. By the way, today the exchange rates of the ruble and the dollar have significantly decreased and in the coming days they may return to the values that were in Russia before the start of the special operation in Ukraine.
It is interesting that Russia continues its deliveries of blue fuel to the Austrian storage facility "Haidache" and the German "Jemgume", however, as Gazprom notes, their reserves are insignificant.