Putin ally pushes deal to restart Nord Stream 2 with US backing

A former spy and close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been engineering a restart of 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 Russian gas giant Gazprom.

Warnig’s plan involved outreach to the Trump team through US businessmen, the people said, 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.

While there have been several expressions of interest, 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.

Senior EU officials 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.

One of Nord Stream 2’s two pipelines was blown up in sabotage attacks in September 2022 that destroyed both pipelines of its older sister project Nord Stream 1. The other Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has an annual capacity of 27.5bn cubic meters of natural gas, is undamaged but has never been used.

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.

But the obstacles are considerable. It would require the US to lift sanctions against Russia, Russia to agree to resume sales it cut off during the war, and Germany to allow the gas to flow to any potential buyers in Europe.

“The US would say, ‘Well, now Russia will be dependable because trustworthy Americans are in the middle of it’,’” said a former senior US official, who was aware of some of the dealmaking efforts. The US investors would collect “money for nothing”, he added.

The talks come as the Trump administration races to seal a peace deal through bilateral discussions with Russia that have excluded Europe and Ukraine, spooking European capitals who fear a US détente with Moscow could threaten the continent. Trump has promised deeper economic co-operation with Russia if a peace agreement can be reached.

Putin, Russia’s president, has talked up the economic benefits he says the US could reap with the Kremlin in the event of a settlement in Ukraine, claiming that “several companies” were already in touch over potential deals.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the pipeline’s Swiss-based parent company, received an exceptional stay on bankruptcy proceedings in January by at least four months.

According to a redacted court document, Nord Stream 2’s shareholder — Gazprom — argued that the new Trump administration, as well as the German election in February 2025, “presumably can have significant consequences on the circumstances of Nord Stream 2” to warrant a delay. The submission pointed to “complex geopolitical affairs” and the sanctions regime.

Warnig told the Financial Times he was “not involved in any discussions with any American politicians or business representatives”, adding that he was “following in this respect the rules [as a] US sanctioned person”.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said he had no information on any talks regarding the pipeline. Gazprom declined to comment. A lawyer representing Nord Stream 2 in Swiss insolvency proceedings and a court-appointed custodian of Nord Steam 2 creditors did not respond to FT requests for comment.

Warnig, 69, has said he became a close friend of Putin’s in the 1990s after setting up an office for lender Dresdner Bank in St Petersburg, where the then-unknown Putin headed the city’s foreign relations committee.

The two became so close that Putin asked Warnig to put up his daughters at the banker’s house in Rödermark when their mother was seriously injured in a car accident.

Putin, who speaks fluent German, taught Warnig’s children to ski in Davos and invited him to his father’s funeral, according to a 2023 interview with the former Stasi officer in Die Zeit.

But Warnig called Putin’s invasion an “indescribable mistake” and resigned from the boards of two Kremlin-run energy companies after the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022.

He told Die Zeit that he made a personal appeal to Putin to end the invasion a few months in and said the Russian president was so isolated that “the only person who can still say something to him is me”.

Warnig left Nord Stream 2 AG, the Russian-owned company that manages the pipeline, in 2023, but told Die Zeit that Gazprom’s chief executive, Alexei Miller, had guaranteed to cover its costs in the hope of saving what remained.

Joe Biden’s US administration sanctioned Warnig and Nord Stream 2 AG in 2022. Biden officials showed little interest in a proposal to buy Nord Stream 2 last year from Stephen Lynch, an American businessman with a record of working in Russia.

Other potential investors have come forward since Lynch first expressed interest. The person with direct knowledge of Gazprom’s discussions said its advanced talks were with a different US-led consortium from Lynch.

Lynch declined to comment when contacted by the FT. He has applied for a licence from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for the Nord Stream proposal. Lynch was previously granted one to bid for the former Swiss subsidiary of sanctioned Russian lender Sberbank in 2022.

Trump was outspoken in his criticism of the pipeline during his first term as president. It has become a symbol for those who blamed Germany — and Europe by extension — for relying too much on Russian gas and helping to finance Moscow’s military machine.

But some of Trump’s team now see the pipeline, which runs from Russia’s Vyborg in the Gulf of Finland to Griefswald on Germany’s Baltic coast, as a strategic asset that can be leveraged in the Ukraine peace talks, according to administration officials.

The complex ownership structure of Nord Stream 2 presents serious potential obstacles for any investment.

Nord Stream 2 is 100 per cent owned by Gazprom. But five European energy companies — Shell, Uniper, OMV, Engie and Wintershall — collectively provided around half of its $11bn construction costs through loans. All five European companies have written off those debts.

The German government in 2022 pulled the plug on the licensing procedure of Nord Stream 2 and never issued the paperwork required to operate it.

Ownership of the pipeline could in theory give US investors a lever to control Russian gas flows to Europe, which is a key market for US liquefied natural gas exports shipped across the Atlantic in tankers.

But former senior US officials and western businessmen with experience investing in Russia said Trump and Putin’s sign-off alone would not be enough to get Nord Stream 2 up and running.

“I can’t imagine the board of any major US corporations saying, ‘Hey, let’s jump back into the Russian market’ right now, and the Russians know this too — they’ve seen these oscillations in American policy,” a former senior US official said.

“Europe still has sanctions in place, and Germany signing up for the rehabilitation of Nord Stream would cause huge rifts. Anything like that is a ways off.”