Putin's demand for ruble payments? No way! say EU nations

President Vladimir Putin’s threat to have “unfriendly” countries pay for Russian natural gas exports only in rubles from now on has got the not-so-friendly treatment from European Union nations

BRUSSELS -- President Vladimir Putin's threat to have “unfriendly” countries pay for Russian natural gas exports only in rubles from now on got the not-so-friendly treatment from European Union nations Thursday.

“I don’t think anybody in Europe really know how rubles look like,” said Slovene Prime Minister Janez Jansa. “Nobody will pay in rubles.”

If others put it less bluntly, it came down to the same — from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who as former chief of the European Central Bank, knows something about currencies.

Early this week, Putin launched the idea that because of Western sanctions targeting the Kremlin and freezing Russian assets, they were "effectively drawing a line over reliability of their currencies, undermining the trust for those currencies.”