Russian-Chinese agreement: “Siberia Power” gas payments in rubles and yuan

Russia's Gazprom and China's CNPC have agreed to transfer payments for gas supplied through the "Siberia Power" to the ruble and yuan.

In a related context, the Russian government is studying a proposal saying that "Moscow may buy between three and four billion dollars worth of Chinese yuan, per month, until the end of the year, to help stop the rise of the ruble."

On August 12, the Chinese ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, announced Friday that "China will continue to increase national currency settlements in trade with Russia."

"Currently, the sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western countries on Russia have caused certain obstacles in trade cooperation between Russia and China. The competent authorities of the two countries need to improve coordination and interaction in order to solve all the difficulties associated with this," the ambassador told Sputnik.

In related news, and commenting on the energy crisis in Europe, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today, Tuesday, that Europe will witness a difficult winter against the background of the gas crisis, stressing that Russia was forced to use this weapon after European sanctions, noting that "Turkey does not face that problem."

"Ankara does not have a gas problem, and Putin was forced to use the gas weapon against Europe's position and its sanctions," Erdogan told reporters, before heading to the Balkan countries, including Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.

The Turkish president explained that "Europe will live in a difficult situation this winter because of the gas outage... However, we do not have any problem with natural gas so far," noting that "Europe is reaping the fruits of what it sowed by taking measures and decisions against Russia, and the latter used the weapons that it has sown." With her hand, the most important of which is gas.

A document seen by Reuters on Monday showed that European Union energy ministers are set to discuss options to rein in high energy prices, including setting gas price caps and emergency credit lines for energy market participants.

On August 28, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said that the European Union will face, in the short term, serious challenges with regard to sanctions imposed on Russia, due to the situation in Ukraine.