Macron, Merkel and Putin in Ukraine talks
EMMANUEL MACRON and Angela Merkel held talks with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine last night, as it emerged the EU could buy emergency gas supplies from Russia in an effort to drive down energy prices.
Vladimir Chizhov, the Kremlin’s ambassador to the EU, earlier suggested Europe could have more gas if it stopped treating Russia as “an adversary”.
Lord Agnew of Oulton, the Treasury minister, told Parliament yesterday that spiralling energy costs were nothing to do with supply shortages, but were owing to a “geopolitical move” by Russia to put pressure on Europe to clear the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Record-breaking gas prices hit a new high last week, before falling after Mr Putin suggested the Russian stateowned company Gazprom could increase supplies.
His deputy prime minister earlier said that supplies could be expedited if German regulators approved Nord Stream.
Critics say that the pipeline exacerbates European dependence on Russian gas and robs Ukraine of transit fees.
France, Spain, Romania, Greece and the Czech Republic have called for EU joint procurement of emergency gas supplies from Russia but those plans are at a very early stage.
The French president and German chancellor ordered their foreign ministers to work with their Russian counterparts to set up a meeting to discuss the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The meeting would take place in the “Normandy Four” system, which usually brings together officials from Moscow and Kyiv under the mediation of Paris and Berlin.
During the phone call, Mr Putin accused the Kyiv authorities of “stubbornly evading” fulfilling agreements reached at peace talks. Mrs Merkel, Mr
Macron and Mr Putin also agreed to consider organising a summit, the Kremlin said in a statement.
France and Germany have been mediating between Kyiv and promoscow separatists since 2015. Ukraine is locked in conflict with breakaway fighters in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions that erupted after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
The EU yesterday imposed sanctions on eight more officials accused of targeting opponents of Russia’s seizure of Crimea.
EU sources said the idea that the bloc could buy emergency gas reserves from Russia was among several being looked at. The common purchase of gas reserves would be similar to the joint procurement strategy for buying coronavirus vaccines at a better price by negotiating as a bloc.
Josep Borrell, the EU’S chief diplomat, said yesterday that Spain was among the member states pushing for joint procurement and common gas storage.
France, Romania, Greece and the Czech Republic also support the plans, which are at a very early stage.
“We continue to have a need for Russian gas and we will probably need more than that contracted. That is why Spain proposes, quite rightly, that the negotiation be done not country by country, but as a whole, as has been done with vaccines,” Mr Borrell told the newspaper El Pais.