The Kremlin's economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and the two leaders of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, are preparing a meeting to discuss restarting Russian gas supplies to Germany. The report comes from a Reuters exclusive published on Friday and based on sources the agency spoke to.
According to Reuters, the meeting could take place as early as March, and it hinges on one condition: it would happen only if a peace framework between Russia and Ukraine is concluded first. Among the venues under consideration are Israel, the United Arab Emirates and India.
Dmitriev heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and has been Moscow's point man in economic talks with the West. Approached by the agency, both he and an AfD spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting.
What is on the table
The central subject would be the return of Russian gas through the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, damaged by explosions in September 2022 and out of service since. Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia accounted for more than half of Germany's gas imports.
The path to that is narrow on two fronts today:
- Chancellor Friedrich Merz has publicly ruled out restarting the pipelines;
- the European Union has sharply cut its purchases of Russian energy since 2022 and plans to end gas imports from the country altogether next year.
Reuters also reported that the organisers had hoped US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would attend. A US official told the agency that American diplomats are not aware of any such meeting.
The meeting and the ballot box
The talks surfaced days after the AfD came first in the state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday — the state where Nord Stream makes landfall, on the Baltic coast.
On Saturday, Dmitriev tied the two things together explicitly. "Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will prosper again when, through joint work with the Alternative for Germany, access returns to the cheap and reliable Nord Stream pipeline," he said in remarks carried by the Russian state news agency TASS and reproduced by the outlet Caliber.Az.
The combination — a party on the rise in a region that lost the infrastructure, and a Russian envoy offering to give it back — is what gives the meeting its political weight, even though it depends on a peace that does not exist.
With information from Reuters, the Kyiv Independent, TASS and Caliber.Az.
