For Russian President Putin, the situation is now clear: the Turkstream pipeline is the safest route for Russian gas to Europe. That's why he's making a lucrative offer to his Turkish counterpart, Erdogan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed using Russian gas to develop Turkey into a transshipment point and exchange for natural gas. "If Turkey and our potential buyers are interested, we could consider building another gas pipeline and creating a gas hub in Turkey for sale to third countries, especially Europe," Putin offered his Turkish colleague Recep Tayyip According to the Interfax news agency, Erdogan attended a meeting. In addition, a gas exchange for price determination could also be set up in Turkey, suggested Putin.
The Russian president praised the Turkstream pipeline, which runs through the Black Sea to Turkey and southern Europe, as the safest route for Russian gas. At the end of September, both lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline leading from Russia to Germany and one of the two lines of Nord Stream 2 in the Baltic Sea had been damaged by explosions. Representatives of the EU and NATO then spoke of sabotage. Putin himself spoke of an "international terrorist attack" on Wednesday and indicated that he believed the United States could be behind it.
The Turkstream line was also supposed to be blown up, Putin claimed, but that didn't happen. Turkstream continues to function reliably. Therefore, Turkey is a logical choice for building a distribution point and gas exchange. "Today the prices are sky high and we could safely regulate them there to a normal market level without any political overlay," Putin said. So far there has been no comment from Erdogan.
The meeting of the two heads of state in Astana, in central Asian Kazakhstan, took place on the sidelines of the Conference on Cooperation and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). On Wednesday, Putin publicly presented his ideas about Turkey's role for the first time. According to this, the natural gas quantities actually intended for the Baltic Sea pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 could be routed to Turkey via the Black Sea region. The largest distributor of gas intended for Europe could then be set up in Turkey.
However, the European Union wants to break away from its dependency on gas supplies from Russia as part of the sanctions imposed for the invasion of Ukraine. In the short term, Russia will not be able to find a replacement for the European sales market because the pipeline infrastructure is lacking. The escalation of the conflict is the main reason for the exploding energy prices.
