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Take an exclusive look behind Russia's gas monopoly as the dubious facade of the secretive energy giant Gazprom is revealed.
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00:05Russia. Here lie the largest natural gas reserves in the world.
00:09Gas that Europe in particular needs.
00:11A conflict over dependencies that has not only worried US politicians since the days of the Cold War.
00:20You're giving the Soviet Union hard currency and they're using that to build up their military.
00:25And this is going to come back to haunt us.
00:27Meanwhile, in the 1980s began an incomparable Korea.
00:34As a case officer, you have to be able to manipulate people.
00:38There is no such a thing as former KGB guy.
00:40Gas is one of his two main tools for coercion, for leverage, for influence.
00:46A continuation of Soviet traditions.
00:52Using oil and gas dependencies, also as a political weapon, is something that was commonplace in the Warsaw Pact.
01:00One of the most powerful men in the world is deliberately using what is probably his most effective instrument.
01:06With the help of Gazprom, Vladimir Putin is implementing a policy that will soon terrify the world.
01:14The whole purpose of Nord Stream was to be able to pressurize Central and Eastern Europe.
01:21Nord Stream 1 was a project aimed at allowing Russians to play hardball against us.
01:42The Yamal Peninsula in western Siberia.
01:45In the midst of the tundra, the indigenous people of the region maintain their thousand-year-old traditions.
01:51The Nenets people live from reindeer herding.
01:55Maiko Soroto is the foreman and is responsible for his colleagues and their families.
02:01Altogether, there are about 40 Nenets.
02:04Every day, they move on.
02:15The Nenets have to migrate in order to feed their animals.
02:19But their path has become increasingly difficult in recent years.
02:23The times of the once untouched nature on the Jamal Peninsula are over.
02:33The hardest crossing is still ahead of us, which is Bovanyenkovo, a long stretch with a wide river and concrete
02:40roads.
02:42Concrete roads in the middle of the tundra.
02:44This is where one of Russia's largest natural gas deposits is located.
02:50The Bovanyenkovo gas field.
02:52The operator Gazprom.
02:54The largest extraction company in the world.
02:56The business with blue gold.
02:58For decades, it has been about politics, about money, and above all, about power.
03:07The people who are explorers in the energy industry, you're always looking for a giant.
03:16You're looking for a large field, which has low unit cost, which will provide you with supply over 30 years.
03:24And there are very few giants left in the world that we know about.
03:28One state in Western Europe is benefiting in particular.
03:32For Germany, the Russian hydrocarbon base, the gas base, is enormous.
03:37So for large supply, low unit cost, you can't do better on a pure economic basis than more cheap supply
03:46from Russia.
03:54Jürgen Hambrecht, head of the world's largest chemical company, BASF, for eight years.
04:04Gas has three meanings for BASF.
04:07One, and this is the most important, raw material.
04:11The chemistry starts with the carbon atom.
04:14Second, we need a lot of heat.
04:17And then we also need electricity to run our plants.
04:20For that, we need gas.
04:22BASF's strategy for gas has always focused on one thing, minimizing risk.
04:28And therefore, access to oil and gas.
04:30And that's why we wanted to produce up to 50% of what we consume in carbon ourselves.
04:36And that was also the driving force in everything we did.
04:44Ten days before the German Bundestag election, 2005, BASF, E.ON and Gazprom sign a contract for the construction of
04:53a pipeline through the Baltic Sea.
04:57We joined the joint venture to develop a new gas field in Western Siberia in 2003.
05:03Then we said, OK, let's bring the cheap gas to Central Europe.
05:08That was a desire for us to connect Germany via this pipeline to these gas fields in which we have
05:14a stake.
05:19And therefore, that's why we have Nord Stream 1.
05:25Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has been a key ally of the BASF group for years.
05:31I have German interests to represent, especially when it comes to energy security for the German economy.
05:42How gas could threaten Europe's security has already been analyzed in 2006 by former NATO analyst Richard Anderson.
05:51It's pretty typical for military analysts to look at energy and how it can often be a source of conflict.
06:00Russia's energy dominance is an area of concern that NATO analysts have certainly been looking at for the past several
06:08decades.
06:10Natural gas gets used for producing electricity, gets used for heating.
06:15It's the basic element that gets used to make plastics, to make fertilizers.
06:19It's the lifeblood of a lot of industrial economies.
06:24So this is an old Soviet Union map.
06:27Here in the center, you can see some major natural gas and oil fields that were developed during Soviet times.
06:35In the case of Russia, I think it's been pretty clear, especially of late, that energy often can be the
06:42precursor to a war.
06:44...tendered by President Kennedy to West Germany's chief of state.
06:50In 1963, the Kennedy administration tried to prevent the construction of the Druzhba pipeline from the Soviet Union to Eastern
06:58Europe.
06:59Mannes Mann was providing the pipes and other equipment.
07:03The U.S. government, the Kennedy administration, told them to stop doing it, which they did.
07:09Chancellor Willy Brandt marks the beginning of Germany's new East politic.
07:14Thor, detente, trade.
07:16Contracts are signed for the construction of gas pipelines.
07:26In 1970, construction of the pipeline that will connect Siberia with Germany for the first time begins.
07:36Nikolai Oručev, minister for the gas industry of the Soviet Union, celebrated the success of a billion-dollar deal with
07:45his German partners in Weidhaus.
07:47The takeover station received gas from the Soviet Union for the first time.
07:52Economics minister Friedrich and his Soviet guests hailed the gas launch as the fruit of detente and normalization between the
08:00two countries.
08:02For the Russians, the deal was basically about hard currency that they needed because their economy was faltering and they
08:09needed the money from the West to keep the whole show going.
08:13Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt also relies on Siberian gas and a second pipeline to Europe is built.
08:21During Chancellor Schmidt's visit to Moscow, German companies concluded a third contract of this type, which is valid until the
08:28year 2000.
08:30Schmidt reassures the worried U.S. President Jimmy Carter, those who trade with each other don't shoot at each other.
08:37In fact, President Carter wrote apparently in his notes that he was really tired of the U.S. providing the
08:43stick and Europeans competing to provide the carrot to incentivize Soviet behaviors.
08:49The U.S., Washington was looking at this saying that you're giving the Soviet Union hard currency and they're using
08:56that to build up their military and this is going to come back to haunt us.
09:03There was an argument even then, you are making yourselves dependent on the superpower Soviet Union, which is our ideological
09:11opponent.
09:13But you are actually members of NATO, so how can you do such a thing?
09:20The worries on the American side were about dependence, that Russia would use energy as a political weapon and that
09:27it would put Europe and Germany in a position where it couldn't stand up to the Soviet Union.
09:33And so this was all seen as part of an overall Soviet strategy to weaken the West and to break
09:40up NATO.
09:40Meanwhile, things are boiling over in Poland because of protests by the Solidarno Strait Union.
09:47The Polish government imposes martial law in 1981.
09:52The new U.S. President Ronald Reagan reacts with sanctions that are also intended to disrupt business with Russian gas.
10:00The United States is taking immediate action to suspend major elements of our economic relationships with the Polish government.
10:07And we're proposing to our allies a further restriction of high technology exports to Poland.
10:13The new Soviet pipeline to Germany is built anyway.
10:21The sanctions actually were not very effective and also divided the West.
10:26Margaret Thatcher said that we're losing jobs because we're not able to supply equipment for that pipeline.
10:37The U.S. business wasn't happy about this.
10:39The U.S. was also selling components.
10:41And the U.S. argument was if we can't sell these things, then, you know, our competitors in Europe will
10:47sell the equipment.
10:48So in the end, they did shelve the sanctions.
10:52It's no secret that our allies didn't agree with this action.
10:55Well, I'm pleased to announce that the industrialized democracies reached substantial agreement on a plan of action.
11:02They did work out a compromise in the 1980s, which put a limit on the amount of Soviet gas that
11:08went to Europe,
11:09and also ensured that there would be Norwegian gas coming to Europe so that there was some diversification.
11:16The U.S. government wants to convince Germans not to rely solely on Russian gas, but most gas continues to
11:23come from Siberia.
11:27As a young diplomat, I was in Washington at the embassy, and the ambassador was really proud that he had
11:33successfully stormed against the Americans' tube embargo.
11:36We were all animated by the idea of, this is what it's all about.
11:40This is part of the policy of detente.
11:43That made sense to everybody.
11:44I don't actually know anyone in my memory who said at the time, this is going in the wrong direction.
11:52The U.S. intelligence services, however, are not happy.
11:56With Ronald Reagan's knowledge, CIA chief William Casey develops a top-secret plan.
12:11Vienna, capital of spies.
12:16I was the typical embargoed trader.
12:20In particular, very special large computers, measuring instruments for nuclear physics.
12:27So these are really delicate things that not so developed states could not develop themselves.
12:33I learned at the state security of the GDR, from which I was also recruited.
12:38And then, of course, with a certain break, I worked in the Soviet Union.
12:50The CIA watched me for over a year, until one day, at the appropriate time, they saw fit to intervene
12:57and gave me the choice.
12:5920 years in prison, at least, or you work for us.
13:10The CIA supplies the embargoed dealer with expensive high-tech goods, whose delivery to the Soviet Union is prohibited.
13:21In the Soviet Union, of course, there was a corresponding reaction, so that suddenly GRU people appeared in the hotel.
13:29Two gentlemen, who politely asked me to answer a few questions, it turned into a six-hour interrogation, because it
13:38was a clear indication that the technological goods were poisoned.
13:43All my goods were also infected.
13:46I didn't find out until the first big computer I sold, two three-piece cabinets, so huge things like that,
13:54so that caught fire.
14:00Reagan and his CIA chief Casey target the Siberian pipelines in particular.
14:07I'm convinced a whole spectrum of technology has been delivered.
14:12There's the famous case of the gas pipeline that was damaged there by an infected unit that was bought in
14:18the West.
14:21In June 1982, the software of one of the largest gas pipelines in the Soviet Union at the time goes
14:28haywire.
14:29Just as the CIA had planned, a huge explosion follows.
14:37The sabotage is followed by the hunt for the traitors.
14:43No question at all. If they catch me, I'm dead. Out. Very simple.
14:48I was very, very happy that I survived. The greatest triumph of my life.
14:561985, a Russian engineer is arrested on the open street in Moscow.
15:01He had been spying for the CIA. Later, the man is executed. Business as usual. The pipeline is also soon
15:09repaired.
15:16At this time, Vladimir Putin is trained as a KGB agent and sent to Germany in 1985.
15:24Somebody asked him, what did you do in Dresden? And he said, you know, he was a KGB case officer
15:29and he said, I was working with people and documents.
15:33Putin is a regular KGB resident in Dresden at this time.
15:44He regularly shows up at Stasi events. The Stasi agents often photograph Putin.
15:54As a case officer, you have to be able to manipulate people. You have to understand people's weaknesses as well
16:01as their strengths.
16:02And add to that the fact that he was a judo champion.
16:06You try and sense, even if your opponent is physically stronger than you, what are their other weaknesses? How can
16:12you distract them?
16:13So I think if you put those two things together, he probably has been quite good at manipulating people, making
16:19them feel that they're very important and appealing to their own vanity.
16:25At that time, a Stasi officer who had previously spied in the West was active in Dresden, Matthias Warnig.
16:31I had a close colleague in Berlin at the time. I was in Moscow.
16:35And he had access to the Stasi files and discovered that Warnig had indeed been with the Stasi.
16:44We were interviewing people who knew both of them and they were able to place them in Dresden in the
16:51late 80s and said that they were working together.
16:55What we were able to ascertain was that the KGB was actually trying to recruit Stasi agents in Dresden.
17:02Putin disguises himself with a Stasi ID, among other things.
17:071989 is no longer just about protecting communism for him.
17:11It was very, very important for establishing the business careers of a lot of different people and also probably allowing
17:18the KGB to preserve a lot of its network.
17:21A year earlier, he had met Stasi chief Erich Mielke.
17:24Putin represents a great power that keeps the GDR afloat with its cheap oil and gas.
17:31Natural gas was very closely related to quality of life, to warmth, to the provision of, you know, services, allowing
17:40schools to function, hospitals to function.
17:43And I have used the word glue.
17:48You could describe that the cheap energy that the Soviet Union was providing to its Eastern European satellites basically as
17:55a subsidy to keep their economies going and to keep them tight in the Soviet orbit.
18:02But, by that time, Russia had also just used oil and gas, also as a means of a disciplinary measure
18:09in the Warsaw Pact, when it came to the fact that there were different positions.
18:14I just remember the uprisings in Hungary, in 1968, in the Czech Republic.
18:20Moscow sends tanks and supplies less oil and gas to Czechoslovakia.
18:28Using oil and gas dependencies, also as a political weapon, is something that was commonplace in the Warsaw Pact.
18:35We offer you particularly favorable oil and gas contracts.
18:40In return, of course, we expect loyalty to Soviet interests.
18:44So, the context of these dependencies and the instrumentalization for foreign and security policy has been something that had long
18:53precedents.
18:56In 1989, the GDR is also on the brink of economic collapse.
19:01Nevertheless, the Soviet Union continues to demand high prices for oil and gas, which the GDR can hardly pay, and
19:09slides deeper and deeper into crisis.
19:11The Soviets were getting all this money from Europeans, and they were seeing what the real price of energy in
19:18Europe was.
19:18And they thought, well, our economy isn't doing great. Why are we giving away our energy to these people?
19:32Agents like Vladimir Putin and Matthias Warnig have to rethink. Their system seems to be at an end.
19:45But Warnig actually gets a lucrative job immediately after the fall of the war.
19:51It's fascinating how, for example, how quickly Warnig was hired by Dresden Bank.
19:56I mean, they identified him very, very early on as someone who would be extremely useful for building up their
20:04business in Eastern Europe and in Russia.
20:07While the statue of the KGB founder is torn down in Moscow, the former agent Putin reorients himself.
20:18Putin has described that very well in interviews, how he came back from Dresden, and he didn't know what to
20:24do, and he was moonlighting as a taxi driver on the streets of St. Petersburg.
20:32He finally landed up in the mayor's office in St. Petersburg with Mayor Sobchak.
20:37Now, Sobchak was a reformer, but he was also corrupt.
20:40So you had a period there where Putin was in charge of foreign economic contacts, and that's, I think, when
20:46he began to make money.
20:49The collapse of the system is followed by violence.
20:53The 1990s was a terrible time. It was just people trying to survive.
21:01Well, the key thing was protection, what the Russians called Kresha, which is roof.
21:05And sometimes roof can be someone in a criminal organisation, sometimes it's someone in the government.
21:12In the 90s, often that person was the same person.
21:15Warnig, a former Stasi agent, establishes contacts in St. Petersburg for Dresdner Bank to the local government and to a
21:23new corporation, Gazprom.
21:26They needed someone in the St. Petersburg government who could look after them and open doors for them.
21:33That was why the sort of Putin-Warnig connection was so interesting, because essentially Putin was Warnig's Kresha.
21:42Putin became more and more influential over the years, receiving dignitaries and building his network.
21:54At the same time, the remnants of the Soviet Union are being bartered away, and the claims for the future
22:00are being staked.
22:04It was a sort of time of no-holds-barred, wild capitalism.
22:09It was the wild east, essentially.
22:11Russian natural resources was passed to a small coterie of oligarchs or sort of extremely rich individuals
22:19in highly dubious privatisation auctions.
22:24It was a really, really rough ride for Western investors, but the potential rewards were just so vast that they
22:32just kept their hand in the game.
22:34While people in Russia are searching for food in empty supermarkets, having to survive cold winters,
22:41international investors are mainly searching for cheap Russian companies trading in raw materials.
22:50A speculative object is the former Ministry of Gas.
22:54In 1989, unnamed Gazprom, since 1992 a joint stock company.
23:01Gazprom was the most undervalued company in Russia at the time.
23:05The reason it was so inexpensive was that everybody assumed every last cubic metre of gas was being stolen out
23:13of the company.
23:13A lot of assets were being siphoned off and given to friends and relatives of senior management.
23:21German corporations are not deterred by this.
23:25One of the biggest shareholders of Gazprom outside the government of Russia was Ruhrgas.
23:30In Soviet times, Ruhrgas had already acquired the Siberian gas sold in Germany.
23:36Other investors, in turn, criticised the conditions at Gazprom.
23:43Every year we would run a candidate for the board of Gazprom, which was one of our people, who'd highlight
23:47the corruption.
23:48They sat on the board, didn't, of course, vote for our candidate, and didn't say a word.
23:52They wanted the gas to flow, and they were absolutely unwilling to say a word about criminality.
23:59Ruhrgas dominates the European market thanks to Gazprom Siberia.
24:03This doesn't sit well with BASF, its largest customer.
24:08In 1990, BASF was really blackmailed by Ruhrgas through prices that were so high that we saw the substance of
24:16the Ludwigshafen site at risk.
24:19That's when we decided we needed an alternative.
24:22We then set up a joint venture with Gazprom to build up the necessary infrastructure in Germany.
24:28And so we built a large network alongside the existing one, including a large storage facility, the largest storage facility
24:39in Germany.
24:40That was a huge story.
24:44That's ultimately co-financed by Gazprom.
24:50These projects were explicitly wanted by the government under Helmut Kohl, also to prop up the beleaguered President Boris Yeltsin.
24:59The idea of partnership with Russia, this Russia, which had made reunification possible for us,
25:08that animated German foreign policy left, right and centre, and for long stretches in the 1990s, that wasn't wrong.
25:21The other objective was not to leave Russia behind as a sort of failing state.
25:28And you didn't want a nuclear power sort of going off on its own in some other world.
25:33Kohl forgives Yeltsin's Russia's debts and gas flows in return.
25:37And Putin is watching this trade from close by.
25:41Putin drew the conclusion very early on that Russia's greatness was based on its extraordinary oil and gas wealth.
25:53And that needed to be deployed strategically in order to enhance Russia's great power status.
26:02As early as 1997, Putin wrote a doctoral thesis on energy dependencies and how energy dependencies can be instrumentalized in
26:12foreign policy.
26:13So, from the very beginning, he developed a very strong personal interest in this problem.
26:19At the time, I myself had talks with the BND, which had also read it, and where we had exchanged
26:25views on what it actually meant.
26:26If the BND was aware of it, the Chancellor's office was also aware of it.
26:32The domestic political trends were relatively clear that there would again be much more state control of the energy industry,
26:39which would also be directly managed by the Kremlin.
26:44A political issue that begins thousands of kilometers away, the Bovanyenkovo gas field in western Siberia,
26:51a gigantic treasure of inconceivable value.
26:56As untouched as the landscape here once was, with eternal pastures as far as the eye can see, those days
27:03are over.
27:03Like many generations of Nanets before him, reindeer herder Maiko Serreto has now been leading his herd through the tundra
27:11for 25 years.
27:12Since the development of the gas field, however, Gazprom's construction measures have made it difficult for the indigenous people.
27:21The destination of Maiko's herd?
27:23The northern Kara Sea.
27:25It has always been like this.
27:27The closer they get to the gas field these days, the more thoughtful the nomads of the tundra become.
27:37Look at the way the roads go. There's a dead end there.
27:41They also built a railroad.
27:44Soon we'll have no more land.
27:46And what if one day they close this crossing too?
27:50We will not be able to cross to the other side.
27:53We'll have to spend the summer somewhere here.
27:59Three years in a row we already had a bad time.
28:02The snow cover was too thick.
28:04The reindeer were so weakened that half of them died.
28:16People extract gas in large quantities.
28:25They sell it abroad for big money.
28:28And what about us?
28:30The fate of the Nanets remains a secondary matter for Gazprom.
28:35While the power of one man in the year 2000 reaches unimagined dimensions.
28:45In the first spring of the new millennium, Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia.
28:50Before that, he was already prime minister and head of the FSB secret service.
28:55His network permeates the state.
28:59There were major things that Putin had to do.
29:02One was to solidify the power that the Russian government had over these industries.
29:08And it wasn't just in natural gas and oil.
29:12It was across the board.
29:14Putin went out of his way to put his cronies into these companies.
29:19Putin is also taking power economically.
29:21Company by company, position by position.
29:24Then you really saw the rise of the Syloviki, the strong men, the guys from the security services,
29:30who then began to occupy key positions in Putin's administration.
29:36After his election, Putin also takes care of Gazprom, an uncontrollable giant.
29:42Still.
29:43Then at the annual general meeting, Putin stepped into the fray.
29:47And he fired Rem Vyokhorev, who was the CEO of Gazprom,
29:51who was doing all the stealing along with his six or seven compatriots.
29:55And he replaced him with a new guy whose job it was not to do any stealing.
29:59His name was Lexi Miller.
30:02He was a guy that Putin knew from St. Petersburg.
30:06I remember saying to somebody in Gazprom, a little bit irritated,
30:10who is this guy?
30:11What does he know about anything?
30:12God, you know, are these the only people that can run Gazprom?
30:15People from St. Petersburg?
30:16And the answer was, no, these are the only people that Putin trusts.
30:22Alexei Miller is not the real Gazprom boss for one day.
30:27No, of course he couldn't decide alone.
30:29He decided in favor of Gazprom, but afterwards a vote had to be taken.
30:33And that's why certain contracts have always taken longer.
30:36Of course, this is a state-owned company, no question about it.
30:40On Putin's orders, Gazprom buys the critical television station, NTV,
30:45and brings it into line.
30:50We'd like to ask everyone, both NTV journalists and all those who instigate them,
30:54to desist from putting up barricades.
30:59Critical journalists are dismissed, protests ignored.
31:08I just wonder how our people could elect such a president.
31:11It's really bitter.
31:1420 years later, Gazprom has its own glossy channels, dominates Russian media.
31:32A dedicated line leads from the station boss's office directly to the Kremlin.
31:38But Putin, through Gazprom, also controls private radio stations like Echo Moscow.
31:49In 2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power,
31:53he saw it as one of his tasks to bring the independent media under control.
31:57He started, of course, with television.
31:59It was also the case that one of our shareholders,
32:02who had a majority stake, Vladimir Gozinski,
32:05had his shares seized in order to take out a loan from Gazprom.
32:10And that's why I always say that Miller is not our shareholder.
32:13Putin is.
32:15Gazprom is not our shareholder.
32:17The presidential administration is.
32:21In March 2022, the station is banned from operating.
32:32In September 2001, Vladimir Putin shows a different face in Berlin.
32:37He becomes a symbol of hope for many German politicians.
32:44Today we must declare firmly and definitively,
32:47the Cold War is over.
32:53Apart from the objective problems,
32:55under everything beats the strong, living heart of Russia,
32:58which is open to full-fledged cooperation and partnership.
33:03I thank you.
33:17In that speech, when I looked at the response at that time,
33:21I somehow thought it was a little naive,
33:24the extent to which people were so uncritical of a man
33:27who had just been in the KGB for many years.
33:32Especially Chancellor Schröder supports Putin, unconditionally.
33:39This alleged democratization potential that we saw
33:43did not exist in reality.
33:45But that doesn't change the fact that Russia was the second
33:48most powerful nuclear power on Earth then,
33:51just as it is today.
33:53And whether you like it or not, you have to live with Russia.
33:56My attitude at the time was,
33:59we have to try internationally to integrate them somehow.
34:03But you don't need to have any illusions
34:05about the character of Vladimir Putin.
34:10Meanwhile in Russia,
34:11Putin has the first offices and houses of oligarchs searched.
34:15A power struggle is coming to a head.
34:20It was very humiliating for Putin and all the KGB guys
34:24to watch a bunch of nobodies in their minds,
34:28people who weren't part of the system,
34:29become so spectacularly wealthy.
34:32Well, all these KGB guys were basically, you know,
34:35paid $50,000 a year by these oligarchs
34:37to go and arrest, you know, enemies
34:39and to drum up fake criminal cases
34:41against business competitors.
34:43And so they had been diminished to paid servants
34:45for the oligarchs.
34:46In 2003, Putin summons the oligarchs,
34:50interviews them live on television.
34:52One man is at the center of it all.
34:55That frustration and that bitterness
34:57came through very, very strongly
34:58in the campaign against Khodorkovsky.
35:00That was where it really crystallized
35:02because you saw, you know,
35:05the sort of strong men in the Kremlin
35:07and in the government
35:08really target someone
35:10who for them symbolized this oligarch class,
35:14someone who had come from virtually nowhere,
35:17to amass staggering wealth
35:21and to take over one of the biggest oil companies in the country.
35:25At the time,
35:27Mikhail Khodorkovsky headed the oil company Yukos,
35:30the number two on the market behind Gazprom.
35:32Khodorkovsky is considered a critic of Putin
35:35and suspects corruption in the state.
35:43Putin's reaction?
35:44He has Khodorkovsky arrested.
35:46The charge?
35:47His company Yukos is accused of tax evasion.
35:56You could see in the kind of,
35:58the campaign to destroy Khodorkovsky,
36:00there was real,
36:01there was a sort of vengeance there
36:02for all the humiliations that they had suffered
36:05with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
36:08Khodorkovsky is being publicly tried.
36:12We were at the time
36:14following this process extremely closely
36:16because it was really the first big attack
36:19by Putin's Kremlin on private business.
36:23The sentence in May 2005,
36:26nine years in a penal camp.
36:28The Yukos company is seized
36:30and auctioned off for less than its value.
36:32Putin's stooges take over the oil company,
36:35in effect, an expropriation.
36:41The expropriation.
36:43First of all, you have to ask,
36:44how did certain people get these resources before?
36:47They may have had something
36:49that didn't belong to them at all.
36:52Khodorkovsky is taken to a Siberian camp,
36:55far to Russia's west on the border with China.
36:58Criticism from the broad doesn't change anything.
37:08Chancellor Schroeder knows on which side he has to stand.
37:17These reforms, ladies and gentlemen,
37:19have put Russia on a path of stable economic growth.
37:23There is not the slightest reason to engage in debates
37:26that, because of whatever events,
37:28think that this confidence should be shaken.
37:34In 2004, German energy companies
37:36are negotiating bitterly with Russia
37:39over access to gas reserves.
37:41At the same time,
37:42Putin is desperate to build a pipeline to Germany.
37:48So, Western technology and partnerships
37:50were very important in terms of
37:52bringing Russia to the point
37:54where it once again became really an energy superpower.
37:59Putin is dependent on technical assistance from Germany.
38:03The Russian pipeline network
38:04is in a state of disrepair.
38:06They had discovered enormous fields
38:08in places like Western Siberia,
38:11but they couldn't develop them
38:12because they didn't have the capital.
38:15German BASF has the capital.
38:21We already converted the first power plant in 1997
38:25from oil to gas,
38:26because the Kyoto Protocol
38:28was, of course, very clearly
38:29in the direction of CO2 reduction.
38:34In Kyoto, the international community
38:36reached its first binding agreement
38:38to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
38:41We adopt these things.
38:43It's all decided.
38:47And the gas brings an advantage.
38:50With gas, you can run a combined heat
38:52and power plant,
38:54which, that is,
38:55you can exploit the resource
38:56much, much better
38:57than with pure oil burning
38:59or coal burning.
39:02Putin is directly involved
39:04in the negotiations
39:05between Russia and BASF.
39:07Both sides need each other.
39:11In the conversations,
39:12he was always very well prepared.
39:14One or the other
39:15goes into talks unprepared.
39:17I never experienced that with Putin.
39:20So many Western executives
39:23who dealt with Putin
39:24felt they were dealing
39:26not only with the president of Russia,
39:28but the CEO of Russian energy
39:30because of his knowledge,
39:32his detailed knowledge
39:33and interest and focus on energy.
39:35So he's, I mean,
39:38he's an energy guy
39:39as well as a political guy.
39:40I've actually met Putin 16 times.
39:43And what impressed me
39:44at most of those gatherings
39:46was his knowledge
39:47of all the statistics.
39:49He doesn't have to turn
39:50to any of his assistants
39:51and ask them.
39:52So he really loves energy.
39:54This guy knows about energy
39:56in a way that leaders
39:58of most countries
39:59have no idea.
40:01He was more the CEO of Gazprom
40:03than he was president.
40:04Putin is driven
40:06by one thing above all.
40:10We are pleased
40:11to have reached an agreement
40:13with the Paris Club
40:14and especially
40:15with our German partners
40:16on an early repayment
40:17of part of this debt
40:19to the Paris Club.
40:21Were representatives
40:22of the German government
40:24present at the negotiations
40:25with Gazprom
40:26and the Russian government?
40:27No, representatives
40:29of the German government
40:30were not there.
40:31But this was really negotiated
40:33between Gazprom
40:34and the German BASF
40:35and the other partners.
40:36It also took
40:38a relatively long time.
40:41Always present
40:42at the negotiations,
40:43Matthias Warnisch,
40:44the ex-Stasi agent
40:46in the service
40:46of Dresdner Bank.
40:49These were former
40:50GIU people
40:51and on the German side
40:53former Stasi people.
40:55and that seemed
40:56very strange
40:57and very suspicious.
40:59It confirmed us
41:01in our negative instinct
41:04about this thing.
41:08Ukrainian gas manager
41:09Korbolyev knows Gazprom
41:11like no one else.
41:12I was born in the U.S.R.
41:14and I clearly understood
41:16that a company
41:16of that importance
41:17can never be
41:19just a simple company.
41:20This is part of the state.
41:21I was a member
41:23of delegation
41:23from Naftegaz
41:25that went to Moscow
41:27to negotiate
41:28a new gas transit contract.
41:31The person
41:31who was hosting us
41:33was Gazprom middle manager
41:35who, after having
41:37a couple of shots of vodka,
41:39he revealed himself
41:40as a former special agent
41:42of Soviet intelligence service.
41:45When I was kind of
41:46talking to myself,
41:47Andrej,
41:47you have to be very careful.
41:50Most people around here,
41:52they are not business people.
41:54They are not gas people.
41:56These people were taught
41:59and developed
42:01to spy
42:02and to steal data.
42:04If you talk to
42:05top-level Russian officials
42:07from the very, very top,
42:09they will tell you
42:10there is no such a thing
42:11as a former KGB guy.
42:24At the end of 2005,
42:26the British Economist wrote
42:28that Putin had exactly
42:29two means of power
42:30to restore Russia's
42:32old influence,
42:33nuclear bombs
42:34and gas.
42:41I think those still
42:43are the two major levers
42:44that Putin has.
42:45He's quite shrewd
42:46and he did realize
42:47that gas is one
42:48of his two main tools
42:49for coercion,
42:51for leverage,
42:51for influence.
42:53Richard Anderson
42:54writes in an analysis
42:56for NATO.
42:58Realistically,
42:59without serious
42:59concerted efforts
43:00on the part
43:01of the EU states,
43:03Russia will have
43:04the upper hand
43:04in this relationship.
43:06Quite simply,
43:07demand will remain constant
43:09almost without regard
43:10to price.
43:11Given the choice
43:12of a cold, dark home
43:13or paying exorbitant prices,
43:16Europeans will do the latter.
43:24At the end of 2005,
43:27things get serious.
43:28The construction
43:29of the Baltic Sea pipeline
43:31begins.
43:31A short time later,
43:33the project is christened
43:35North Stream.
43:36That is always a show event,
43:38of course,
43:39but it was still
43:39an important starting point,
43:41of course.
43:43Today,
43:44we are giving the go-ahead
43:45for the North European
43:46gas pipeline project.
43:51North Stream 1
43:52is a huge story,
43:53no question about it.
43:54I don't regret it
43:56at all, either.
43:57I don't have any problems
43:58with it at all.
43:59It was the right thing
44:00to do.
44:00It was not only right
44:02for BASF,
44:03but it was also right
44:04for Europe.
44:05We should reserve the gas
44:07in Western Siberia
44:08for Europe,
44:08whenever possible.
44:11On a cold December day,
44:13Alexei Miller introduces
44:15the new chairman
44:16of the supervisory board.
44:18Just 17 days earlier,
44:20Gerhard Schröder
44:20had lost his post
44:22as German chancellor.
44:25Did you actually know
44:26beforehand
44:26that he was going
44:27to do this?
44:28No, I didn't know.
44:29I phoned Angela Merkel
44:30directly from there.
44:32And told her that
44:33Schröder had accepted
44:34the job?
44:35Yes, I told her
44:36that was the intention.
44:39What did she say?
44:41She didn't comment
44:42further on it,
44:43of course.
44:45Angela Merkel
44:46becomes chancellor
44:47in 2005.
44:48The appointment
44:49of her predecessor
44:50by Gazprom
44:51is raising a lot of dust.
44:54When he took that job,
44:55I mean,
44:56there was considerable,
44:57I think,
44:58surprise in the United States
45:00and in other countries
45:02because it really
45:03was very unseemly
45:04for a chancellor
45:05who had negotiated
45:07the deal
45:08then when he's defeated
45:09in an election
45:10to immediately
45:11take a job
45:12and profit
45:12very handsomely
45:13from it.
45:14So I think
45:15that was certainly,
45:16it was received
45:17very negatively
45:18in the United States
45:19and, you know,
45:21a lot of suspicion
45:22about it.
45:23In Germany too,
45:24the ex-chancellor's
45:25new position
45:25is not only
45:26met with enthusiasm.
45:29It was a point,
45:30of course,
45:31that I would have
45:31preferred to have
45:32resolved differently.
45:33The more political
45:34a scenario is,
45:35the more conflicts
45:36arise
45:37and I didn't really
45:38want those.
45:48I don't think
45:49it's decent
45:50to be in charge
45:51at Gazprom
45:51when an ex-Stasi major
45:53is the chairman
45:54of the board.
45:56Gerhard Schröder
45:59has taken over
46:00the overall supervision
46:01of a project
46:02here in Germany's
46:03very own interest.
46:09Schröder, indeed,
46:11doesn't become
46:11a Gazprom lobbyist
46:13on his own.
46:13His choice
46:14has been coordinated.
46:17Then it should be
46:18someone who can
46:18represent the economic
46:20interests of the
46:20European side well
46:22but at the same time
46:23has a rational approach
46:24to the majority
46:25shareholder
46:26and Schröder combined
46:27these two elements
46:28at the time.
46:30Even the new
46:31chancellor,
46:32who is publicly
46:33cooler toward Putin,
46:34does not distance
46:35herself from
46:36Schröder's new job.
46:41I think Angela Merkel
46:43actively supported
46:44and endorsed this.
46:45I don't remember
46:46Merkel raising
46:47her voice against
46:48it even once.
46:49On the contrary,
46:50as far as I remember,
46:52she also frequently
46:53used these channels
46:54through Gerhard Schröder.
46:56I think it also
46:57provides a sense of
46:58these important people
47:00are important in
47:01countries,
47:01so it must be
47:01something important
47:02that they're doing
47:03on behalf of Russia.
47:05So it does work
47:05to both neutralize
47:07any concerns
47:08that citizens
47:10would have
47:10and it also
47:11seems that
47:12they're collecting
47:13this very prestigious
47:15crowd to do
47:16their business.
47:17So again,
47:17it is not just
47:19Mr. Schröder
47:20who has fallen
47:21trap into this,
47:21although he's become
47:22such a poster child
47:24for exactly
47:25what this looks like.
47:29There was no opposition
47:31from the CDU
47:32on this issue.
47:33Why not?
47:34Because the entire
47:35German economy,
47:36especially the energy
47:38industry,
47:38wanted it.
47:40But you can't say
47:41the SPD was the
47:42big promoter.
47:43No, there were many.
47:46And I can't recall
47:47a single occasion
47:48when significant voices
47:49said,
47:50this is going
47:51in the wrong direction.
47:56In Ukraine,
47:58we clearly realized
47:59that Nord Stream 1
48:01from the very start
48:02was a project
48:03aimed at
48:04allowing Russians
48:07to play
48:09hardball against us.
48:11Ukraine's
48:12Ushgorod,
48:13one of Europe's
48:14most important
48:14gas hubs.
48:16In Putin's mind,
48:18these pipelines
48:19were not something
48:20that Ukraine
48:21had built.
48:22They were something
48:22that the Soviet Union
48:23had built.
48:24And it drove Russia
48:25crazy that Ukraine
48:26controlled these pipelines,
48:28which was the way
48:29that its gas
48:29moved to the west.
48:31Russia tried
48:32at one point
48:33to take control
48:34of the gas transit system
48:35going through Ukraine,
48:37but Ukraine resisted it.
48:39And when that fell apart,
48:42they basically decided
48:44that the only solution
48:45to this situation
48:46was to go around Ukraine.
48:48I mean,
48:48it was a very clear,
48:49concerted strategy,
48:51rational from Russia's
48:53point of view,
48:53to build pipelines
48:55that reduced its dependence
48:57and ultimately
48:58eliminate its dependence
48:59on Ukraine,
49:01which Russia really regarded,
49:02or at least Putin
49:03and people around Putin
49:04did not regard
49:05as a legitimate state.
49:07The gas pipelines
49:08run either through Poland
49:10or Ukraine.
49:11A huge system
49:12has been created
49:13since 1970.
49:15The gas pipeline
49:16is not just one pipeline.
49:18Together,
49:19they have the capacity
49:20to transport more gas
49:23than Russia produces
49:24for the European market.
49:26The new pipeline,
49:27it is suspected,
49:28is designed
49:29to take Ukraine
49:30and Poland
49:31out of the picture
49:32as transit countries
49:33while guaranteeing
49:34Germany's supply of gas.
49:36The whole purpose
49:37of Nord Stream
49:38was to be able
49:40to pressurize
49:41Central and Eastern Europe.
49:42There isn't a single Ukrainian
49:44who is not a Russian ally,
49:46who thinks that Nord Stream
49:48is anything other
49:49than a catastrophic
49:50and very thinly veiled
49:52attempt to bypass Ukraine.
49:56two weeks after the start
49:58of construction
49:58of Nord Stream.
50:01They have sought this conflict
50:02from the very beginning.
50:04Their policy has always been
50:05to illicitly divert gas
50:07or, to put it more simply,
50:09to steal it
50:10from European consumers.
50:13I hereby order
50:14the start of the exercise
50:15to limit gas supplies
50:16to Ukraine.
50:19Shortly,
50:20the gas flow to Ukraine
50:21and thus to Europe stops.
50:23The 2006 conflict
50:25was very, very important
50:27as a starting point.
50:29The consequence
50:31of a relatively short
50:33cut-off of Russian gas
50:35were much greater
50:37than anyone expected.
50:38We never thought
50:39this could happen.
50:40Look, it's happened.
50:41An emergency meeting
50:43of the EU is convened.
50:45We should discuss
50:47what has happened
50:48during those 24 hours
50:49and happened for the first time
50:51in over 40 years
50:52of constant
50:53and reliable
50:54Russian gas supply.
50:55Putin is continuing
50:57a Soviet tradition
50:58with gas toppling.
50:59The reformer,
51:00Mikhail Gorbachev,
51:01also used gas
51:02as a weapon.
51:03In 1991,
51:06against states
51:06that no longer wanted
51:07to be part
51:08of the Soviet Union.
51:14The former ambassador
51:15of the Soviet Union
51:16in Germany,
51:17Valentin Fallin,
51:19he developed
51:19the so-called
51:20Fallin Doctrine
51:21at that time
51:21and there were
51:22seven instruments
51:23listed how Russia
51:24would enforce
51:25its foreign policy
51:26in the future
51:27and the most important
51:28instrument
51:28is the exploitation
51:30of energy policy
51:31dependencies.
51:36In the early 1990s,
51:38when there was
51:38the whole issue
51:39of how to divide
51:39the Black Sea fleet
51:41located in Crimea,
51:42you had these
51:43very heated discussions
51:44about what is going
51:44to happen
51:45with this fleet,
51:46how is it going
51:47to be divided.
51:48Russia threatened
51:49Ukraine with a gas boycott.
51:52If it comes to that cap,
51:54then we will certainly
51:55be forced
51:56to curtail
51:57power generation.
52:00You have this
52:01perfect situation
52:02for that kind
52:03of pressure
52:03to be exerted there.
52:05They certainly
52:05were using energy
52:06as a weapon then.
52:09Different parts
52:10of Ukraine's
52:11natural gas debt
52:12vis-à-vis Russia
52:13were cancelled
52:15in exchange
52:16for different percentages
52:17of that Black Sea fleet
52:19given to Russia.
52:22Mission accomplished.
52:24In addition,
52:25there was the publication
52:26by a Swedish colleague
52:28in 2006,
52:29Larsson,
52:30going back also
52:31to the 1990s,
52:32that in more than
52:3350 cases,
52:34Russia has instrumentalized
52:35precisely such energy
52:36dependencies
52:37for foreign policy purposes
52:38and has in effect
52:40politically blackmailed states.
52:44That's what many
52:45Europeans heavily missed.
52:47They simply did not
52:49want to accept
52:51harsh reality
52:52that they are facing
52:54a new way of Russia
52:55of impacting
52:57European Union
52:58and the Western world.
52:59and other
53:22FOX
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