Alexei Miller, the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom and a long-standing confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, met with Markus Frohnmaier, the foreign policy spokesman for the German far-right AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The focus of his discussion with Miller at Gazprom’s headquarters had been on the possibility of recommissioning the Nord Stream pipelines and resuming Russian gas supplies, Frohnmaier told dpa.
Affordable oil and gas supplies are important for Germany's industrial giants. “Our task is to place German national interests at the centre without compromise,” Frohnmaier said. The other parliamentary groups in the Bundestag have accused the AfD of representing Russia's interests rather than those of the German people.
Moscow initially reduced gas supplies to Germany via Nord Stream following the start of the war against Ukraine ordered by Putin, and then halted them completely in September 2022, citing technical problems.
A few weeks later, three of the four conduits forming the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up. According to investigations by Germany's Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the suspects are from Ukraine.
At the St Petersburg forum, Russia intends to demonstrate its economic strength to the outside world despite a slump in growth following four years of war and Western sanctions.
Gazprom has highlighted the low levels of gas storage in Europe. It said that replenishing these stocks by winter would be a difficult task.
In recent years, Moscow has repeatedly predicted that Europeans could face empty gas storage facilities and cold homes during the winter, but these predictions have not come to pass.
