ST. PETERSBURG - Russia has not dropped the idea of building a gas pipeline to the Mediterranean area, nor does it plan to phase out gas transport via Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
“As concerns our interest in the Mediterranean area, we haven’t lost it. Gazprom, an Italian, and a Greek company have signed a memorandum on exploring options for cooperation. We are considering these options,” Putin said at a meeting with top managers of leading international news agencies on Friday evening.
“By the way, we are not planning to fully curtail (gas) transport across Ukrainian territory,” he said.”The only question is how much (gas) we are going to transport and where,” he said.
“A monopoly is a bad thing, and when someone holds a monopoly in their hands, they immediately start abusing it,” he said.
“If Ukraine, for instance, understands that it doesn’t have a monopoly over transporting Russian energy resources to Europe, then some figures in that country will stop their blackmail regarding these supplies. We will simply switch to normal business cooperation,” he said.
