EU leaders played up the positives of a 30th summit with Russia yesterday but a combative Russian President Vladimir Putin took them bluntly to task over energy and human rights.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy, highlighting the depth of their trade ties, said it had been a “positive and constructive summit”, preparing the way for new and enhanced cooperation with Moscow.

European Commission Head Jose Manuel Barroso echoed that sentiment but then insisted at length that Russian complaints about the bloc’s energy policy were unjustified.

Russia supplies some 30 per cent of EU energy needs and its companies were welcome in the bloc but they had to respect EU rules, especially on pricing, he said in a veiled reference to Gazprom, currently facing an EU probe.

But Putin would have none of this.

“My good old friend Barroso spoke at such great length because he knows that he is wrong,” he said.

Barroso and journalists should read the relevant parts of the EU-Russia cooperation accord, he said, repeating: “Read it, read it!”

On human rights too, Putin was determined to have his say.

Noting that the issue had been discussed as usual at such summits, he said Russia had its own concerns, notably “the outrageous violation of the rights of Russian-speaking people” in Europe.

This was “intolerable”, he said, pointing to unnamed Baltic states. Putin has previously made clear he has little time for Western charges of human rights abuses in Russia, seeing this as interference in internal matters.

The two parties also exchanged views on a proposed visa-free regime, touted as complementing trade ties.