Our energy and transit-transport cooperation with Turkey and Turkmenistan is open and mutually beneficial. This is what Director of the Third Subdivision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for CIS countries Aleksandr Sternik said in an interview with Interfax, in response to the question whether Moscow doesn’t have concerns about the reports that Turkey is trying to entangle Turkmenistan in the Turkic Union so that it has control over the natural gas route from Turkmenistan to Europe.

“The politicization of the energy issue has been touched upon recently, and it is also incited by the United States and its supporters. There are meaningless talks about Russia’s threats to energy security in the European Union, and various projects for reduction of the Russian power generators in the European market are being presented. We’ll see whether the authors of those ideas be able to prove with, as they say, ‘figures’ the advantage of their alternatives over our products,” Sternik stated.