“Russian president Vladimir Putin on Saturday expressed disapproval of a threat by Belarus’ leader to cut off Russian gas supplies to the European Union,” reports Politico. “‘He can, I guess, it’s no good, though, and I’ll talk to him about it … in case he just said it out of anger,’ Putin told Russian TV channel Rossiya 1 in response to Alexander Lukashenko’s threat to turn off the gas taps. ‘This would be a violation of our transit contract and I hope it will not come to that,’ Putin said, referring to agreements governing the flow of Russian gas along pipelines running through Belarus. Cutting off the gas ‘would not contribute to the development of our relations with Belarus as a transit country,’ he warned.”

“The Russian president also claimed not to have heard Lukashenko’s gas threat which was relayed on Thursday by Belarussian state media. Lukashenko made the threat as the EU considered more sanctions on his regime in response to the migrant crisis on the Belarus-Poland border. On Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia will respect its gas contracts with Europe. ‘Russia has been, is and will remain a country that fulfills all obligations to provide European consumers with gas,’ Peskov said.”

Russia appears to be looking to maintain their hydrocarbon delivery contracts in an attempt to cash out on their fossil fuel reserves. This follows a recent study published in the journal Nature Energy which predicted that Russia could end up with as much as $2 Trillion in petroleum and natural gas reserves that end up “stranded” as the rest of the world moves on to alternative energy, leaving those reserves effectively worthless.