Many news media reported that Alexander Nikolov, Bulgaria's energy minister, said in an interview that he regretted the refusal to pay for Russian gas in rubles and considered this decision premature. We decided to check if he said anything like that.
Many leading Russian media wrote about this news: "Gazeta.ru", Lenta.ru, "News", "Rossiyskaya Gazeta", "Tsargrad", TV channel "Star", Regnum, "Arguments and Facts", "Moskovsky Komsomolets", Life and others. Some publications write that Nikolov called the refusal of Russian gas premature, others - hasty. Some note that when buying gas from the United States, Bulgaria has to pay much more, so it wants to buy gas from Russia again.
It is not difficult to check the correctness of this news: almost all publications that published it refer to interview Alexandra Nikolova to the Bulgarian TV channel BTV, many even attach a link. However, if you open it, the transcript shows that Nikolov did not talk about haste or prematureness. We turned to native Bulgarian speakers, and they confirmed that there was nothing like that in the interview.
Most publications cite this quote to confirm their words: “The level of solidarity and unity should be as high as possible. The European Commission has made it clear that payments in rubles are a violation of sanctions. The question is whether there should be a distinction between corporations and state-owned companies.” This is an answer to the journalist’s question whether pan-European negotiations are planned on the purchase of Russian gas if Germany and Italy start paying for it in rubles. However, in this quote there is nothing about prematureness, haste or a desire to resume gas purchases in Russia. And it is quite difficult to draw such a conclusion from it.
When a journalist asks Nikolov about negotiations with Gazprom on a new long-term contract, he answers quite categorically: “At a time when, firstly, the state (Russia - editor's note) is in a state of war and is obviously an aggressor, secondly, a specific company (Gazprom - editor's note) is used as a political tool to create tension in the system, and thirdly, in the commercial part the most the unpleasant thing is that it’s an unpredictable partner, I don’t think there’s any point in commenting on whether it’s worth conducting further negotiations with the company.” This quote refutes media reports that Bulgaria is allegedly going to resume purchases of Russian gas.
In addition, Nikolov continues to insist that the terms of the deal with the new American supplier are much more favorable than what Gazprom offered: “At the time of signing in the United States, the price of the agreed tanker was better than the price of delivery from Gazprom Export.” The minister did not disclose the specific cost to journalists, but this still completely contradicts what some Russian media have said that Bulgaria now has to pay much more for gas and therefore wants to resume purchases in Russia.
Thus, the majority of Russian media that published this news either incorrectly interpreted the words of Alexander Nikolov, or deliberately attributed to him something that he did not say. One would think that Nikolov might have stated something similar somewhere else. But the authors of news articles refer to a specific interview, quote from it (not containing, by the way, big words from the title) and even post a link, which means that their articles are based on this interview. And all of them are clearly incorrect.
Fake
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