Putin says Russia is not using gas as a weapon, is ready to help

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that his country is not using energy as a weapon against Europe and that Russia stands ready to help the region as its energy crisis continues.

“We are not using any weapons,” Putin told CNBC in Moscow on Wednesday, according to a translation. “Even during the hardest parts of the Cold War Russia regularly has fulfilled its contractual obligations and supplies gas to Europe,” he said.

Describing reports that Russia has withheld gas supplies to Europe, Putin called such accusations as “politically-motivated blather” and there was “nothing to support it [the idea] that we use energy as a kind of weapon.” On the contrary, he said, Russia was “expanding its supplies to Europe.”

Putin’s comments came as he participated in a panel moderated by CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Russian Energy Week. Speaking ahead of the panel, which includes the CEOs of ExxonMobil, BP, TotalEnergies and Mercedez-Benz, Putin said Europe should “not deal in blame-shifting” over the energy crisis in the region and that European countries had not done enough to replenish gas reserves in the summer.

“Higher gas prices in Europe are a consequence of a deficit of energy and not vice versa and that’s why we should not deal in blame shifting, this is what our partners are trying to do,” he told delegates at Russian Energy Week, an annual event in Moscow which is now in its 20th year.

“The European gas market does not look to be well-balanced and predictable” he said, with the main reason being, he added “that not everything in this market depends on the producers, no lesser role is played by the consumers of gas.”

Nonetheless, Russia said it was ready to meet its contractual supply obligations and to discuss additional actions and cooperation with its European partners, Putin said, stating that Russia had already increased its gas supplies to Europe by 15% so far this year.

Putin laid the blame for Europe’s gas shortages at its own door, as well as blaming a lack of renewable energy generation this summer and reduced supplies from other partners, including the U.S.

“You see the problem does not consist in us, it consists in the European side, because, first, we know that the wind farms did not work during summer because of the weather, everyone knows that. Moreover, the Europeans did not pump enough gas into their underground gas facilities … and the supplies to Europe have decreased from other regions of the world.”

“So we have increased our supplies but others, including the U.S., have reduced their supplies and this is the cause of the panic.” Russia can supply more, he said, “but we need requests to do that.”

Russian energy week is known to be where the president lays out his energy agenda for the Russian economy and features experts…