my colleague ben brown was speaking to our correspondentjenny hill. she was in moscow and described russia s reaction to those sanctions. the kremlin this morning dismissed such talk as just plans. a spokesman for vladimir putin saying that this would be a double edged sword and by saying that, what he meant, he was repeating something which vladimir putin quite often tells the russian people, that any kind of energy embargo on the part of europe would hurt europe more than it will hurt russia. vladimir putin, i think for some time now, has calculated, not without justification, that it will be very difficult for the eu to come up with a cohesive and agreed position on any kind of embargo on russian energy supplies and he s seeing that today. it gives him a bit of time to try and work out what he will do when he loses the very important revenue from oil and gas sales to europe. he s talking about intensifying sales to other customers, particularly those in asia.
they were not paying in roubles. but he set knows it s not impossible. it is a gamble but it s worth pointing out the reality is more complicated more complicated than vladimir putin saying you pay in roubles research. russia has imposed a new mechanism for payment meaning a european country will pay in euros or dollars into a russian bank account which it has to set up, that bank account will then exchange the currency for roubles on the moscow stock exchange and will be used to make the payment to gazprom or another company. it is perhaps a little more complicated than the headline suggests. we don t know what other european countries are planning to do. about the payments. for the time being, vladimir putin is saying to the russian people, you know, they need our gas. they need our oil. this is going to hurt us more than them. we hold the power here. you know, even if europe did impose some kind of energy embargo
and there is a very clear-cut i won t say it is a playbook. but a recipe. or an action plan. how to support ukraine to win this fight. weapon, sanctions, russian isolation, energy embargo, and development and reconstruction plan for ukraine. actually five points. which are on the table. we ll be watching those steps closely to see if they continue. arseny yatsenyuk, former ukrainian prime minister, thanks so much for joining us tonight. thank you, sir. well, this country still at war every day has no time to properly mourn the dead. each day bodies are being found. particularly in bucha, the site of those mass graves we ve reported on extensively. as a result some morgues are now struggling to handle, to
dependency on russian gas is 80%. it s a similar situation to the republic of germany and our industry and our private households need the gas. so now we try everything to get independent, but it is not possible today, tomorrow, but maybe in a few years we are independent from russian gas. a few years. that could mean a lot more death, a lot more tragedy coming out of this war in ukraine if the goal is actually to get vladimir putin to stop this war because of an energy embargo. first, i have to say that i believe things will be moving in europe very sunni way, at least partially they ll use national banks like they have already
quote, economic warfare, not the weak sanctions and half measures put in place so far. now a month later where are we? are those measures strong enough yet? well, i am absolutely standing by the opinion that if the west is here to take down on putin and make sure he fails, we need to target the sources of income that he gets and cripple russian federal budgets to finance this war. obviously we have travelled quite far from where we were one month ago and right now what is really at stake is the energy embargo. it s primarily up to the european union states to decouple themselves from russian energy. some countries are much more forward on it. eastern europeans and poland, and some countries like austria or germany are lagging behind, and we need to have the critical