MOSCOW, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected accusations that his country is using its economic leverage to attain foreign political ends.

    "We have heard the idea imposed on us all the time that suggests Russia is using its old and new economic levers to attain foreign political ends. This is wrong," he told more than 1,200Russian and foreign journalists attending his annual press conference in the Kremlin.

    "Russia has always fulfilled and is determined to continue to fully fulfill all its obligations. However, we are not obliged to subsidize the economies of other countries in huge amounts comparable to their budgets," Putin said.

    "Nobody does this, so why demand it from us?" he said. Russia has hiked the price of energy supplied to other former Soviet republics, including Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, saying it was part of the government's strategy to switch to market relations on energy trade with other countries.

    "What we are doing and the agreements we reach with transit countries are aimed primarily at ensuring the interests of the major consumers," Putin said.

    He added that Russia would reduce its dependence on transit countries by seeking new routes for energy exports, such as expanding the capacity of the Primorsk oil terminal in the Leningrad region by 50 million tons and speeding up working on the East Siberia-Pacific pipeline.