by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

At the beginning of this month, Bild, the German media sensationalist, claimed to have discovered “incredible developments between [Presidents] Trump and Putin. And they affect Germany! Bild research reveals secret talks between the US and Russia in Switzerland. It’s about an explosive gas deal for Germany! At the centre of the affair: once again the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 2.”

The Bild story alleged that Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, made several visits for negotiations at the headquarters of Nord Stream 2 AG — the Baltic seabed pipeline’s operator, wholly owned by Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom — in Steinhausen, in the Swiss canton of Zug. Grenell has denied the story.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, added there was no point in his commenting on Bild’s claims because Grenell “has already denied it. And so the Americans have denied it. Also, there is a lot of information [in the Bild publication] that is not true.”

The Bild report followed just hours after a report appeared in London by the Financial Times maintaining that “a former spy and close friend of Vladimir Putin has been engineering a restart of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe with the backing of US investors, a once unthinkable move that shows the breadth of Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Moscow. The efforts on a deal, according to several people aware of the discussions, were the brainchild of Matthias Warnig, an ex-Stasi officer in East Germany who until 2023 ran Nord Stream 2’s parent company for the Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom.”

The anonymous sources told the newspaper “Warnig’s plan involved outreach to the Trump team through US businessmen as part of back-channel efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine while deepening economic ties between the US and Russia. Some prominent Trump administration figures are aware of the initiative to bring in US investors, according to officials in Washington, and they see it as part of the push to rebuild relations with Moscow.”

Warnig told the FT he was “not involved in any discussions with any American politicians or business representatives.”

Stephen Lynch, a well-known arbitrageur between Russian and US asset buyers and sellers following the Yukos oil company’s nationalization between 2004 and 2007, was reportedly behind some of the fresh media leaks, according to which “one US-led consortium of investors has drawn up the outlines of a post-sanctions deal with Gazprom, according to one person with direct knowledge of talks who declined to disclose the identity of the prospective investors.” For Lynch’s record, including his attempt at a hostile takeover of gas assets of Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash in 2016, click to read the archive.

While Lynch has been promoting a Nord Stream takeover for his own commercial reasons, the planting of the story in Bild and the FT may have been an attempt by European officials to kill it.

“Senior EU officials,” according to the London newspaper, “became aware of the Nord Stream 2 discussion in recent weeks. Leaders of several European countries are concerned and have discussed the matter, according to several officials with knowledge of the discussions…The latest plan would in theory give the US unparalleled sway over energy supplies to Europe, the people said, after EU countries moved to end their dependence on Russian gas in the aftermath of the invasion.”

Russian analysis of these purported dealmakers and their targets has been compiled in this new piece, published on March 18 by the Moscow business weekly, Expert. In its assessment of the German and British claims, Expert concludes that American speculators are being attracted to the potential profit in schemes for buying low-priced Russian assets currently under sanctions; lobbying the Trump Administration to lift the sanctions as part of an end-of-war settlement in the Ukraine; and then reselling the assets if and when business with Russia revives and the Russian asset prices return to pre-war market levels. Lobbying the Trump Administration is the polite term for this.

According to Expert, a scheme to dismantle the current sanctions and refill the single, undamaged pipe of Nord Stream 2 with Gazprom gas for Germany is between improbable and impossible. However, an alternative with better chances for speculators is a buyout of Rosneft’s German oil refinery at Schwedt.