(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised Slovakia that Russia's Gazprom would find alternative ways to supply contracted gas to Slovakia after the end of transit through Ukraine, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Friday.
Fico met Putin in Moscow on December 22 to discuss gas and the war in Ukraine, after Ukraine decided not to allow Russian gas flows through Ukraine from January 1.
Fico has threatened to take retaliatory measures against Kiev because Slovakia wanted to continue receiving Russian gas through Ukraine to keep costs down and continue to earn transit country revenues from onward gas shipments to Europe.
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“I talked to Putin about a contract between us and Gazprom, which states that they have to supply the gas to us somehow,” Fico told a parliamentary committee.
“We can push something through the southern flow (route through Turkey), but so far we have storage, Slovak consumption is secured.”
Fico said Putin guaranteed Russia would meet its obligations, although capacity in the TurkStream pipeline and the connecting route carrying Russian gas through Turkey to Europe was limited.
“President Putin has guaranteed that they will keep their promises,” Fico said.
Some could be supplied via Western Europe, Fico said, referring to Slovakia's pipeline connections with gas networks of central and western European neighbors.
Fico has argued that Europe has suffered billions of euros in losses from a rise in gas prices caused by the absence of about 13.5 billion cubic meters of gas that flowed through Ukraine last year, including about 3 billion cubic meters of gas for Slovak consumption.
Fico said a deal was close to continue shipments through Ukraine, with Russian gas changing hands before entering Ukraine, under a deal involving Azerbaijan or Slovak gas importer SPP, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy refused at the EU summit in December the expansion of gas flows through Ukraine.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
