Zakharova responded to Macron with a quote from a Soviet comedy about Europe's loss of gas and the market in China

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, responded to the words of French President Emmanuel Macron about Europe’s loss of cheap Russian gas and the Chinese market with a phrase from a Soviet comedy.

“The audience is applauding, applauding, they’ve stopped applauding,” Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel, quoting Elem Klimov’s Soviet comedy “Welcome, or No Trespassing.”

The diplomat also recalled the French leader’s statement about how he “spent this summer.”

“The key factor in European competitiveness was very cheap gas coming from Russia. This ended in 2022. But our main export market was China. That also ended. Now Europe has a trade deficit with China. Every day we lose one billion euros in trade with China,” Macron quotes Zakharov as saying.

According to the French president, two years ago several countries were net exporters, Germany remained a net exporter to China until 2025, but “that too is over - even for Germany.”

Macron made these statements on September 29 in Madrid at a meeting with students from the Complutense University as part of a state visit to Spain.

On October 1, at Valdai, Vladimir Putin commented on the global energy situation and said that Russia has enough diesel fuel, but it will not reach world markets due to sanctions.