China Secures Massive Discount on Russian Gas as Moscow’s Leverage Weakens

Russia is giving China a huge discount on natural gas purchases, underscoring the Kremlin’s fiscal dependency on Beijing. The Moscow Times (MT), citing Russian Duma documentation, shows that China will pay an average of approximately $248 per thousand cubic meters of pipeline gas in 2026, compared with $562 for Gazprom's other foreign customers outside the former Soviet Union. That means Beijing is receiving as much as a 56 percent discount on its purchase price. The steep discount appears to be the cost of Beijing’s ongoing political…