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00:13A CIDADE NO BRASIL
00:33A CIDADE NO BRASIL
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.
01:52The 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.
02:05Every 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.
02:37A long stretch with a wide river and concrete roads.
02:42Concrete roads in the middle of the tundra.
02:45This 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.
02:57The business with blue gold.
02:59For 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.
03:31For Germany, the Russian hydrocarbon base, the gas base, is enormous.
03:36So 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 plans.
04:20For that, we need gas.
04:22BASF's strategy for gas has always focused on one thing, minimizing risk, and 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.
06:11Natural 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.
06:49In 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 Oruchev, 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 it and saying that you're giving the Soviet Union hard currency and they're
08:55using that 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.
09:41Meanwhile, things are boiling over in Poland. Because of protests by the Solidarność Strait Union, the Polish government imposes martial
09:49law in 1981.
09:51The 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.
10:36U.S. business wasn't happy about this. The 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 American's 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.
11:42That 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.
11:55With Ronald Reagan's knowledge, CIA chief William Casey develops a top-secret plan.
12:10Vienna, capital of spies.
12:16I was the typical embargoed trader.
12:19In 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.
13:19In 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.
13:35It turned into a six-hour interrogation, because it was 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.
14:08I'm convinced a whole spectrum of technology has been delivered.
14:11There'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.
14:36The 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.
15:15At this time, Vladimir Putin is trained as a KGB agent and sent to Germany in 1985.
15:24And somebody asked him, what did you do in Dresden?
15:26And he said, you know, he was a KGB case officer and he said, I was working with people and
15:32documents.
15:33Putin is a regular KGB resident in Dresden at this time.
15:44He regularly shows up at Stasi events.
15:47The Stasi agents often photograph Putin.
15:54As a case officer, you have to be able to manipulate people.
15:58You have to understand people's weaknesses as well as 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?
16:12How can you distract them?
16:13So I think if you put those two things together, he probably has been quite good at manipulating people,
16:19making them 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.
16:34I was in Moscow and he had access to the Stasi files and discovered that Warnig had indeed been with
16:41the 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
16:52and 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
17:16and also probably allowing the KGB to preserve a lot of its network.
17:21A year earlier, he had met Stasi chief Erich Mielke.
17:25Putin 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,
17:39allowing schools 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
17:54basically as a 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
18:10when it came to the fact that there were different positions.
18:14I just remember the uprising is 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,
18:32is something that was commonplace in the Warsaw Pact.
18:35We offer you particularly favourable oil and gas contracts
18:39in return, of course, we expect loyalty to Soviet interests.
18:44So, the context of these dependencies and the instrumentalization for foreign and security policy
18:51has been something that had long precedents.
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,
19:06which the GDR can hardly pay and slides deeper and deeper into crisis.
19:11The Soviets were getting all this money from Europeans
19:14and they were seeing what the real price of energy in Europe was.
19:18And they thought, well, our economy isn't doing great.
19:21Why are we giving away our energy to these people?
19:32Agents like Vladimir Putin and Matthias Warnig have to rethink.
19:36Their 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.
19:57I mean, they identified him very, very early on as someone who would be extremely useful
20:02for building up their business in Eastern Europe and in Russia.
20:08While the statue of the KGB founder is torn down in Moscow,
20:11the former agent Putin reorients himself.
20:18Putin has described that very well in interviews,
20:21how he came back from Dresden and he didn't know what to do
20:25and 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
20:45and that's, I think, when he began to make money.
20:49The collapse of the system is followed by violence.
20:53The 1990s was a terrible time.
20:56It was just people trying to survive.
21:01Well, the key thing was protection, what the Russians called krisha, which is roof.
21:05And sometimes roof can be someone in a criminal organisation.
21:09Sometimes it's someone in the government.
21:11In the 90s, often that person was the same person.
21:16Warnig, a former Stasi agent, establishes contacts in St. Petersburg for Dresdner Bank
21:21to the local government and to a new corporation, Gazprom.
21:25They needed someone in the St. Petersburg government
21:29who could look after them and open doors for them.
21:33That was why the sort of Putin-Warnig connection was so interesting
21:37because essentially Putin was Warnig's krisha.
21:42Putin becomes more and more influential over the years,
21:45receiving dignitaries and building his network.
21:54At the same time, the remnants of the Soviet Union are being bartered away
21:59and the claims for the future are 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
22:17or sort of extremely rich individuals in highly dubious privatisation auctions.
22:24It was a really, really rough ride for Western investors,
22:28but the potential rewards were just so vast
22:31that they just kept their hand in the game.
22:34While people in Russia are searching for food in empty supermarkets,
22:38having to survive cold winters,
22:40international investors are mainly searching for cheap Russian companies
22:45trading in raw materials.
22:50A speculative object is the former Ministry of Gas.
22:54In 1989, unnamed Gazprom,
22:58since 1992 a joint-stock company.
23:01Gazprom was the most undervalued company in Russia at the time.
23:05The reason it was so inexpensive
23:07was that everybody assumed
23:09every last cubic metre of gas
23:11was being stolen out of the company.
23:14A lot of assets were being siphoned off
23:16and given to friends and relatives of senior management.
23:21German corporations are not deterred by this.
23:25One of the biggest shareholders of Gazprom
23:27outside the government of Russia was Ruhrgas.
23:30In Soviet times, Ruhrgas had already acquired
23:33the Siberian gas sold in Germany.
23:36Other investors, in turn,
23:38criticised the conditions at Gazprom.
23:43Every year we would run a candidate
23:45for the board of Gazprom,
23:46which was one of our people
23:47who highlighted the corruption.
23:48They sat on the board,
23:49didn't, of course, vote for our candidate,
23:51and didn't say a word.
23:52They wanted the gas to flow,
23:54and they were absolutely unwilling
23:55to say a word about criminality.
23:59Ruhrgas dominates the European market
24:01thanks to Gazprom Siberia.
24:02This doesn't sit well with BASF,
24:05its largest customer.
24:08In 1990, BASF was really blackmailed
24:12by Ruhrgas through prices that were so high
24:15that we saw the substance
24:16of the Ludwigshafen site at risk.
24:19That's when we decided we needed an alternative.
24:22We then set up a joint venture with Gazprom
24:25to build up the necessary infrastructure in Germany.
24:28And so we built a large network
24:30alongside the existing one,
24:32including a large storage facility,
24:37the largest storage facility in Germany.
24:40That was a huge story.
24:44That's ultimately co-financed by Gazprom.
24:49These projects were explicitly wanted
24:52by the government under Helmut Kohl,
24:54also to prop up the beleaguered
24:56President Boris Yeltsin.
24:59The idea of partnership with Russia,
25:04this Russia,
25:05which had made reunification possible for us,
25:08that animated German foreign policy
25:10left, right and centre,
25:12and for long stretches in the 1990s,
25:15that wasn't wrong.
25:21The other objective was not to leave Russia behind
25:26as a sort of failing state,
25:28and you didn't want a nuclear power
25:29sort of going off on its own in some other world.
25:33Kohl forgives Yeltsin's Russia's debts
25:35and gas flows in return,
25:37and Putin is watching this trade from close by.
25:42Putin drew the conclusion very early on
25:45that Russia's greatness
25:48was based on its extraordinary oil and gas wealth,
25:53and that needed to be deployed strategically
25:56in order to enhance Russia's great power status.
26:02As early as 1997,
26:05Putin wrote a doctoral thesis on energy dependencies
26:08and how energy dependencies
26:10can be instrumentalised in foreign policy.
26:13So, from the very beginning,
26:14he developed a very strong personal interest
26:17in this problem.
26:19At the time,
26:20I myself had talks with the BND,
26:22which had also read it,
26:24and where we had exchanged views
26:25on what it actually meant.
26:27If the BND was aware of it,
26:29the Chancellor's office was also aware of it.
26:31The domestic political trends
26:33were relatively clear
26:34that there would again be much more state control
26:37of the energy industry,
26:39which would also be directly managed by the Kremlin.
26:44A political issue that begins thousands of kilometres away,
26:48the Bovonenkovo gas field in western Siberia,
26:51a gigantic treasure of inconceivable value.
26:56As untouched as the landscape here once was,
26:59with eternal pastures as far as the eye can see,
27:02those days are over.
27:03Like many generations of Nanets before him,
27:06reindeer herder Maiko Serreto
27:08has now been leading his herd through the tundra
27:11for 25 years.
27:12Since the development of the gas field, however,
27:16Gazprom's construction measures
27:18have 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,
27:30the more thoughtful the nomads of the tundra become.
27:37Look at the way the roads go.
27:39There'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 was so weakened that half of them died.
28:16People extract gas in large quantities.
28:24They sell it abroad for big money.
28:27And 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
28:38reaches unimagined dimensions.
28:45In the first spring of the new millennium,
28:47Vladimir 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.
29:01One 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,
29:27the strong men, the guys from the security services,
29:30who then began to occupy key positions in Putin's administration.
29:37After his election, Putin also takes care of Gazprom,
29:40an uncontrollable giant, still.
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? What 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,
31:18dominates 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 Eko Moscow.
31:44I've already gone, but I haven't returned today.
31:47I have two, three meetings.
31:50In 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.
32:00It 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.
32:20In 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, the Cold War is over.
32:53Apart from the objective problems, under everything beats the strong, living heart of Russia,
32:58which is open to full-fledged cooperation and partnership.
33:16In that speech, when I looked at the response at that time,
33:21I somehow thought it was a little naive,
33:23the extent to which people were so uncritical of a man who had just been in the KGB for many
33:29years.
33:32Especially Chancellor Schröder supports Putin, unconditionally.
33:39This alleged democratization potential that we saw did not exist in reality.
33:45But that doesn't change the fact that Russia was the second most 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, we have to try internationally to integrate them somehow.
34:03But you don't need to have any illusions about the character of Vladimir Putin.
34:10Meanwhile in Russia, Putin 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 to watch a bunch of nobodies in their minds,
34:28people who weren't part of the system, become so spectacularly wealthy.
34:32Well, all these KGB guys were basically, you know, paid $50,000 a year by these oligarchs
34:37to go and arrest, you know, enemies and to drum up fake criminal cases against business competitors.
34:43And so they had been diminished to paid servants for the oligarchs.
34:46In 2003, Putin summons the oligarchs, interviews them live on television.
34:52One man is at the center of it all.
34:55That frustration and that bitterness came through very, very strongly in the campaign against Khodorkovsky.
35:00That was where it really crystallized because you saw, you know, the sort of, the strong men in the Kremlin
35:07and in the government really target someone who for them symbolized this oligarch class,
35:14someone who had come from virtually nowhere to amass staggering wealth
35:21and to take over one of the biggest oil companies in the country.
35:25At the time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky headed the oil company Yukos, the number two on the market behind Gazprom.
35:32Khodorkovsky is considered a critic of Putin and suspects corruption in the state.
35:43Putin's reaction? He has Khodorkovsky arrested.
35:46The charge? His company Yukos is accused of tax evasion.
35:56You could see in the kind of, the campaign to destroy Khodorkovsky, there was real, there was a sort of
36:02vengeance there
36:02for all the humiliations that they had suffered with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
36:08Khodorkovsky is being publicly tried.
36:12We were, at the time, following this process extremely closely because it was really the first big attack
36:19by Putin's Kremlin on private business.
36:23The sentence in May 2005, nine years in a penal camp.
36:28The Yukos company is seized and auctioned off for less than its value.
36:32Putin's stooges take over the oil company, in effect, an expropriation.
36:41The expropriation.
36:43First of all, you have to ask, how did certain people get these resources before?
36:47They may have had something that didn't belong to them at all.
36:52Khodorkovsky is taken to a Siberian camp, far 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, have put Russia on a path of stable economic growth.
37:23There is not the slightest reason to engage in debates that, because of whatever events,
37:28think that this confidence should be shaken.
37:33In 2004, German energy companies are negotiating bitterly with Russia over access to gas reserves.
37:41At the same time, Putin is desperate to build a pipeline to Germany.
37:48So, Western technology and partnerships were very important in terms of bringing 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 is in a state of disrepair.
38:06They had discovered enormous fields in places like Western Siberia,
38:11but they couldn't develop them because they didn't have the capital.
38:15German BASF has the capital.
38:21We already converted the first power plant in 1997, from oil to gas,
38:26because the Kyoto Protocol was, of course, very clearly in the direction of CO2 reduction.
38:34In Kyoto, the international community reached its first binding agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
38:40We adopt these things. It's so decided.
38:47And the gas brings an advantage.
38:50With gas, you can run a combined heat and power plant,
38:53which, that is, you can exploit the resource much, much better than with pure oil burning or coal burning.
39:02Putin is directly involved in the negotiations between Russia and BASF.
39:10In the conversations, he was always very well prepared.
39:14One or the other goes into talks unprepared.
39:17I never experienced that with Putin.
39:20So many Western executives who dealt with Putin felt they were dealing not only with the president of Russia,
39:28but the CEO of Russian energy because of his knowledge, his detailed knowledge and interest and focus on energy.
39:36So he's, I mean, he's an energy guy as well as a political guy.
39:40I've actually met Putin 16 times.
39:43And what impressed me at most of those gatherings was his knowledge of all the statistics.
39:49He doesn't have to turn to any of his assistants and ask them.
39:52So he really loves energy.
39:54This guy knows about energy in a way that leaders of most countries have no idea.
40:01He was more the CEO of Gazprom than he was president.
40:05Putin is driven by one thing above all.
40:10We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the Paris Club and especially with our German partners
40:16on an early repayment of part of this debt to the Paris Club.
40:21Were representatives of the German government present at the negotiations with Gazprom and the Russian government?
40:27No, representatives of the German government were not there.
40:31But this was really negotiated between Gazprom and BASF and the other partners.
40:36It also took a relatively long time.
40:41Always present at the negotiations, Matthias Warnisch, the ex-STASI agent in the service of Dresdner Bank.
40:49These were former GIU people and on the German side former STASI people.
40:55And that seemed very strange and very suspicious.
40:59It confirmed us in our negative instinct about this thing.
41:08Ukrainian gas manager, Kovalev, knows Gazprom like no one else.
41:12I was born in the U.S.R. and I clearly understood that a company of that importance can never
41:18be just a simple company.
41:20This is part of the state.
41:21I was a member of a delegation from Naftegaz that went to Moscow to negotiate a new gas transit contract.
41:31The person who was hosting us was Gazprom, middle manager, who, after having a couple of shots of vodka, he
41:39revealed himself as a former special agent of Soviet intelligence service.
41:45When I was kind of talking to myself, like, Andrei, you have to be very careful.
41:50Most people around here, they are not business people, they are not gas people.
41:56These people were taught and developed to spy and to steal data.
42:04If you talk to top-level Russian officials from the very, very top, they will tell you there is no
42:10such a thing as a former KGB guy.
42:24At the end of 2005, the British economist wrote that Putin had exactly two means of power to restore Russia's
42:32old influence, nuclear bombs and gas.
42:42I think those still are the two major levers that Putin has.
42:45He's quite shrewd, and he did realize that gas is one of his two main tools for coercion, for leverage,
42:51for influence.
42:53Richard Anderson writes in an analysis for NATO.
42:58Realistically, without serious concerted efforts on the part of the EU states, Russia will have the upper hand in this
43:05relationship.
43:06Quite simply, demand will remain constant, almost without regard to price.
43:10Given the choice of a cold, dark home, or paying exorbitant prices, Europeans will do the latter.
43:24At the end of 2005, things get serious.
43:28The construction of the Baltic Sea Pipeline begins.
43:31A short time later, the project is christened Nord Stream.
43:36That's always a show event, of course, but it was still an important starting point, of course.
43:43Today, we are giving the go-ahead for the North European Gas Pipeline project.
43:51Nord Stream 1 is a huge story. No question about it. I don't regret it at all, either. I don't
43:57have any problems with it at all. It was the right thing to do. It was not only right for
44:02BASF, but it was also right for Europe. We should reserve the gas in Western Siberia for Europe, whenever possible.
44:11On a cold December day, Alexey Miller introduces the new chairman of the Supervisory Board.
44:18Just 17 days earlier, Gerhard Schröder had lost his post as German Chancellor.
44:24Did you actually know beforehand that he was going to do this?
44:28No, I didn't know. I phoned Angela Merkel directly from there.
44:32And told her that Schröder had accepted the job?
44:35Yes, I told her that was the intention.
44:39What did she say?
44:41She didn't comment further on it, of course.
44:45Angela Merkel becomes Chancellor in 2005. The appointment of her predecessor by Gazprom is raising a lot of dust.
44:54When he took that job, I mean, there was considerable, I think, surprise in the United States and in other
45:01countries, because it really was very unseemly for a chancellor who had negotiated the deal, then when he's defeated in
45:09an election, to immediately take a job and profit very handsomely from it.
45:14So, I think that was certainly, it was received very negatively in the United States and, you know, a lot
45:21of suspicion about it.
45:23In Germany too, the ex-chancellor's new position is not only met with enthusiasm.
45:29It was a point, of course, that I would have preferred to have resolved differently.
45:33The more political a scenario is, the more conflicts arise, and I didn't really want those.
45:48I don't think it's decent to be in charge at Gazprom when an ex-Stasi major is the chairman of
45:54the board.
45:58Gerhard Schröder has taken over the overall supervision of a project here in Germany's very own interest.
46:09Gerhard Schröder indeed doesn't become a Gazprom lobbyist on his own. His choice has been coordinated.
46:17Then it should be someone who can represent the economic interests of the European side well, but at the same
46:23time has a rational approach to the majority shareholder.
46:26And Schröder combined these two elements at the time.
46:30Even the new chancellor, who is publicly cooler toward Putin, does not distance herself from Schröder's new job.
46:41I think Angela Merkel actively supported and endorsed this. I don't remember Merkel raising her voice against it even once.
46:49On the contrary, as far as I remember, she also frequently used these channels through Gerhard Schröder.
46:56I think it also provides a sense of, you know, these important people are important in countries, so it must
47:01be something important that they're doing on behalf of Russia.
47:04So it does work to both neutralize any concerns that citizens would have, and it also seems that they're collecting
47:13this very prestigious crowd to do their business.
47:16So, again, it is not just Mr. Schröder who has fallen trap into this, although he's become such a poster
47:24child for exactly what this looks like.
47:29There was no opposition from the CDU on this issue. Why not? Because the entire German economy, especially the energy
47:38industry, wanted it.
47:39But you can't say the SPD was the big promoter. No, there were many.
47:46And I can't recall a single occasion when significant voices said, this is going in the wrong direction.
47:56In Ukraine, we clearly realized that Nord Stream 1 from the very start was a project aimed at allowing Russians
48:06to play hardball against us.
48:11Ukraine's Ushgorod, one of Europe's most important gas hubs.
48:16In Putin's mind, these pipelines were not something that Ukraine had built.
48:22They were something that the Soviet Union had built, and it drove Russia crazy that Ukraine controlled these pipelines,
48:28which was the way that its gas moved to the west.
48:31Russia tried at one point to take control of the gas transit system going through Ukraine, but Ukraine resisted it.
48:39And when that fell apart, they basically decided that the only solution to this situation was to go around Ukraine.
48:48I mean, it was a very clear, concerted strategy, rational from Russia's point of view,
48:53to build pipelines that reduced its dependence and ultimately eliminated its dependence on Ukraine,
49:01which Russia really regarded, or at least Putin and people around Putin did not regard as a legitimate state.
49:06The gas pipelines run either through Poland or Ukraine.
49:11A huge system has been created since 1970.
49:15The gas pipeline is not just one pipeline.
49:18Together, they have the capacity to transport more gas than Russia produces for the European market.
49:26The new pipeline, it is suspected, is designed to take Ukraine and Poland out of the picture as transit countries,
49:33while guaranteeing Germany's supply of gas.
49:35The whole purpose of Nord Stream was to be able to pressurize Central and Eastern Europe.
49:42There isn't a single Ukrainian who is not a Russian ally,
49:46who thinks that Nord Stream is anything other than a catastrophic and very thinly veiled attempt to bypass Ukraine.
49:56Two weeks after the start of construction of Nord Stream.
50:01They have sought this conflict from the very beginning.
50:04Their policy has always been to illicitly divert gas or, to put it more simply, to steal it from European
50:10consumers.
50:13I hereby order the start of the exercise to limit gas supplies to Ukraine.
50:19Shortly, the gas flow to Ukraine and thus to Europe stops.
50:23The 2006 conflict was very, very important as a starting point.
50:30The consequence of a relatively short cut-off of Russian gas were much greater than anyone expected.
50:38We never thought this could happen. Look, it's happened.
50:41An emergency meeting of the EU is convened.
50:45We should discuss what has happened during those 24 hours and happened for the first time in over 40 years
50:52of constant and reliable Russian gas supply.
50:55Putin is continuing a Soviet tradition with gas toppling.
50:59The reformer Mikhail Gorbachev also used gas as a weapon.
51:03In 1991, against states that no longer wanted to be part of the Soviet Union.
51:14The former ambassador of the Soviet Union in Germany, Valentin Fallin, he developed the so-called Fallin Doctrine at that
51:21time,
51:21and there were seven instruments listed how Russia would enforce its foreign policy in the future.
51:27And the most important instrument is the exploitation of energy policy dependencies.
51:36In the early 1990s, when there was the whole issue of how to divide the Black Sea Fleet, located in
51:42Crimea,
51:42you had these very heated discussions about what is going to happen with this fleet, how is it going to
51:47be divided.
51:48Russia threatened Ukraine with a gas boycott.
51:50If it comes to that cap, then we will certainly be forced to curtail power generation.
52:00You have this perfect situation for that kind of pressure to be exerted there.
52:05They certainly were using energy as a weapon then.
52:09Different parts of Ukraine's natural gas debt vis-à-vis Russia were cancelled in exchange for different percentages of that
52:18Black Sea Fleet given to Russia.
52:24In addition, there was the publication by a Swedish colleague in 2006, Larsson, going back also to the 1990s, that
52:32in more than 50 cases, Russia has instrumentalized precisely such energy dependencies for foreign policy purposes, and has in effect
52:40politically blackmailed states.
52:44That's what many Europeans heavily missed.
52:47They simply did not want to accept harsh reality that they are facing new way of Russia, of impacting European
52:57Union and the Western world.
53:00And in fact, beyond the future, although this, the munition of Iran is תנeurys, withoutérique
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