‘Since our end consumers haven’t been paying their gas bills, we now come to owe nearly 3 billion RUR to our natural gas supplier,’ Uralsevergaz’s Deputy GD Dmitriy Lavrenko said at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg.

‘It is very fortunate that the supplier shows a lot of tolerance and understanding, so reaching a compromise should be possible. Besides, we keep using bank loans to pay off our debts, and we intend to keep doing so in the future,’ he added.

‘The way I see it, the main problem with our consumers’ debts lies in the difficulty of law-enforcement procedures. In fact, we do have a strong civil legislation, including the bankruptcy laws, for instance. What we need is to have these laws applied more often. Uralsevergaz actually managed to start cooperating with the local law-enforcement agencies this year, which definitely yields results,’ Lavrenko noted.