This would allow Russian Federation to achieve its goal of delivering gas to Europe while avoiding Ukraine.
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Novak, however, said the opposition was purely political and did not take economic reality into account.
Prague and Sofia won’t sign Eastern European group’s letter calling on EU to block Nord Stream-2 pipeline bypassing Ukraine.
If almost all the Russian gas arrived in Germany, the European Union would have to upgrade its grid to enable gas to flow west to east to the central, eastern and southern countries now supplied via Ukraine.
That demand, stating that the European Commission should block the Nord Stream-2 project is “too tough”, Mladek said, TASS reports.
Russia’s TASS agency earlier quoted Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller as saying if Turkey is intersted in Turkish Stream it must turn to Russian Federation so that talks are carried out.
Novak, meanwhile, also said the intergovernmental talks on TurkStream between Russian Federation and Turkey have been halted.
Russian Federation introduced economic sanctions against Turkey after the incident, but initially maintained current projects such as Turkish Stream and the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant would not fall in the scope of restrictions.
Negotiations for the pipeline have hit previous hiccups since the initial agreement to build the pipeline was reached last December, but tensions between the two countries have ratcheted up in recent weeks after Turkey shot down a Russian jet it said strayed across the Syrian border into Turkey.
Russian Federation had already said that TurkStream’s planned capacity would be just 32 Bcm/year, down from the original plan for 63 Bcm/year, while Turkey has still not approved the project at governmental level.
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Russian Federation could deal a real blow by reducing gas supplies, a move broadly seen by analysts and Turkish officials as unlikely for now but which could seriously hurt the Turkish economy and for which Ankara is drawing up contingency plans.
