ANKARA - The Russian Embassy in Ankara has said that Russia would continue providing safe energy to its partners including Turkey.
The embassy released a statement about recent news reports and comments in both Turkish and western media which claimed that Russia would use Turkey`s energy dependency against it in line with its own goals and that Russia would react to Turkey by reducing the amount of natural gas.
In the statement, the embassy said that Turkey-Russia relations developed in a quite dynamic way recently, and that the active political dialogue between the two states was the sign of importance they attached to further improvement and deepening of Turkish-Russian partnership and cooperation.
The embassy said that Russia became Turkey`s number-one commercial partner, adding that amount of mutual investments reached 10 billion USD.
Highlighting importance of energy in Turkey-Russia cooperation, the embassy said in its statement that fuel oil and energy accounted for 70 percent of total trade volume between the two countries.
It said that 3 million tons of crude oil was sent to Turkey from Russia and Turkey was the third biggest natural gas purchaser of Russia behind Germany and Italy. Russia will act in line with commercial and economic views instead of political and geo-political thoughts in those relations, the embassy said.
According to the statement, Russia pledged to continue providing safe energy to its partners including Turkey.
Referring to a news report which published an interview with Russian Ambassador in Ankara Vladimir Ivanovski under the title of "natural gas: Russia`s new weapon", the embassy said that such an expression was not used at all. Such a title contradicted positive developments in Turkish-Russian cooperation.
The embassy denied similar other rumors and added that Russia was ready to increase the volume of its energy cooperation with Turkey.
(UK-MS)
(DIP)