Russia is paying $4.2bn a year for oil and gas transit, President of Russia Vladimir Putin said at a press conference for Russian and foreign journalists. If this amount is set to increase, Russia will be forced to seek alternative ways to export energy resources.
The president noted that the relations with transit countries have deteriorated because all earlier transit routes had crossed the USSR or the so-called Eastern block countries. Now that all those states have become independent they want to make profit on the transit. Putin stressed that Russia would take further steps to shift to market relations with the CIS.
With regard to gas and oil prices for Belarus, Putin said the issue had been brought up some three years earlier. Yet, Russia abstained from charging a market price at that time not wishing to aggravate the situation in Belarus before the elections there.
