European LNG takes up 20% on Europe's market, but it's still planning to stop using it - Putin

MOSCOW. Oct 26 (Interfax) - Liquefied natural gas from Russia still takes up about 20% of the European market, Russia has never denied supplies of resources to Europe, and despite it, Europeans are still making plans to cease purchasing the things they receive from Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday.

"The policy in relation to Russia is banning everything coming from Russia, and it is stupid. We have not banned anything. By the way, at the first stage, they accused Russia of banning [supplies] and denying relatively cheap resources, oil, gas, coal, raw uranium. But we never denied supplies of anything to anyone," Putin said in an interview with Vesti News Service journalist Pavel Zarubin.

Europeans are still "making plans to stop using the things they receive from Russia, and by the way, they receive a lot," he said.

"Our LNG takes up 20% of the European market. It is a decent segment of the market," he said.

Russia agrees that "it is necessary to switch to renewable [energy] sources, but it must be done gradually and as soon as other sources are ready to be used in a rational and economically appropriate fashion," he said.

"Go on and close your nuclear power plants, close your coal strip mines and so on. I have no idea what you would be using after that," Putin said.

All these mistakes together "created such basis, which encouraged all these outages in major cities" of Europe, he said.