China will not pay the prices for Russia’s natural gas in the quantities that Vladimir Putin needs to make up for the European market he lost after his invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president’s former deputy energy minister has told Newsweek.
“It’s quite clear that Russia cannot make any profits by exporting gas to China,” Vladimir Milov, who served in the role between May and October 2002 during Putin’s first presidential term and is now an opposition figure abroad, said.
He said the prospect that Gazprom, one of the world’s largest publicly listed natural gas companies, can remain a prime revenue generator for Russia’s economy and Putin’s military machine is “pretty much dead now.”
Putin has touted his close ties with Chinese…
