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March 25 Sri Lanka expects to finalize a deal to purchase Russian oil and petroleum products next week, head of the state fuel company Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) Janaka Rajakaruna said.

According to the head of the corporation, Sri Lanka hopes to purchase oil and petroleum products from Russia for three months. Responding to a question about how the island nation intends to pay for Russian oil and petroleum products, Rajakaruna said that this aspect would also be discussed next week. The newspaper recalled that Russia has largely switched to payments for oil supplies in rubles or Chinese yuan.

Earlier, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Sri Lanka, Mikhail Rogov, said that negotiations on oil supplies from Russia to Sri Lanka are scheduled to begin on March 26 in Colombo. A representative of the island nation’s cabinet, Nalinda Jayatissa, had previously said that Colombo was already maintaining contacts at the government level with Moscow regarding supplies of Russian oil. According to him, a visit by Russia’s deputy energy minister to Sri Lanka is expected in the near future.

In mid-March, Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Levan Dzhagaryan was invited to meet with the country’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath. During the meeting, the minister asked Russia to consider the possibility of supplying energy resources to Sri Lanka amid the global energy crisis caused by the escalation in the Middle East.