What does it really mean to pay for gas in rubles

Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, has announced that he will demand payment of energy exclusively in rubles to “hostile countries”. News that has given yet another shock to the gas market. It almost seems that the Russian president wants, in addition to creating demand for rubles, to test the energy independence of Europe, which at the moment does not yet seem to have found a viable alternative to Russia. But what does it mean that Putin will only get paid for gas in rubles? The immediate and future effects and consequences of this new decision by the Russian president, Professor Alessandro Lanza – professor at Luiss – explained to Money.it, highlighting how Putin “thus wants to control the entire monetary mass of hard currency through an organization public yet to be defined, but that would bring a strong change, with a message: oil and gas are in my control. ”For us it will not change much, but then for whom does it change? “For the Russians and not necessarily for the better, in the sense that Russian companies that sell gas previously had hard currency, euros or dollars, now they will only receive rubles and with the runaway rate of the moment it is not exactly a bargain. For companies that sell energy, therefore, it will be worse. “In the meantime, the knot of contracts that, on gas and oil, are denominated in dollars and euros, has not yet been resolved and the payment rules are changing in progress – as declared by President Vladimir Putin – is by no means taken for granted and simple. Also because the change would be one-sided. The real weapon in the hands of the president would be the interruption of the sale of gas and oil to European countries, but for the moment it remains an unlikely scenario: Russia also needs the European market.