Greece and Russia are planning to sign a bilateral agreement which would grant Athens up to five billion euros as prepayment for the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, according to a report on Friday from German magazine Spiegel.
According to Spiegel, a deal is planned to be signed on Tuesday, and if the agreement is reached Greece would receive three to five billion euros as an advance payment for gas transit from Russia to EU countries through the territory of Greece.
The magazine said that the details of the upcoming deal were discussed during Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ official visit to Moscow.
However on Saturday, Russia dismissed the notion as Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that no such loan was planned.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin said himself during the media conference that nobody asked for our help. Naturally energy cooperation was discussed. Naturally, the parties of the high level talks agreed to work out all details of these issues at an expert level. Russia didn’t offer financial help because it was not asked,” the spokesman told the Russian radio station Business FM.
In December, Russia announced that it was abandoning the South Stream gas pipeline project, citing EU opposition as one of the reasons.
Instead of the South Stream project, Russia made the decision to build a pipeline from Russia to Turkey — dubbed the “Turkish Stream” pipeline — and create a gas hub at the Greek border for South European customers.
The Turkish Stream pipeline will deliver Russian gas to Turkey and customers in South Europe by means of a transit hub on the Turkish-Greek border. Its annual capacity is expected to be about 63 billion cubic meters.
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