The devil's project

Klett-CottaSteffen Dobbert, Ulrich Thiele | Nordstream: Wie Deutschland Putins Krieg bezahlt | Klett-Cotta | 400 Seiten | 18 EUR
Both politicians and the public seem slow to realise what an epochal mistake Germany has made with the "Nord Stream" project. It now falls to a committee of inquiry in, not Berlin, but the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (MV) to clarify how this came about - and promptly, as expected, one of the main culprits, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, has pleaded "burnout" and apparently will not be appearing this coming October...
Journalists Steffen Dobbert and Ulrich Thiele have gone much further: they have reconstructed this incredible political scandal after years of meticulous investigative work and published their findings with the Klett-Cotta publishing house in February. As the title and cover suggest, this is a veritable economic and political thriller - only unfortunately, it is not fiction.
Plot locations: The Schwerin state parliament and two low-ranking authorities in Hamburg and Stralsund; the Federal Chancellery and the offices of various federal politicians in Berlin. Secondary locations: Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm and the Swiss canton of Zug.
And, of course, the Kremlin.
The protagonists: Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nord Stream 2 AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian state-owned company Gazprom, since 2005; ex-Stasi major and GDR spy Mathias Warnig, Managing Director of Nord Stream 2 AG until 2023; Erwin Sellering, former Minister-President of MV and Chairman of the Board of the MV Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation until 2024; Sellering's successor as Minister President of MV, Manuela Schwesig; the former Federal Ministers of Economics Sigmar Gabriel and Peter Altmaier, who gave the project the green light; a whole team of former Stasi informers; the German companies Siemens, Eon Ruhrgas and BASF/Wintershall.
And, of course, Vladimir Putin.
In supporting roles: Two other former German chancellors, Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz, who were jointly responsible for the "devil's project" (Merkel).
Objectors on the side of the law: EU official Klaus-Dieter Borchardt and the European Parliament, which in 2021 demanded a halt to construction on the Nord Stream 2 project.
The plot: Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been waging war against Ukraine since 2014, with the aim of annexing the country. Therefore, he wants to bypass Ukraine (as well as the Baltic states and Poland, critics of Russia) when it comes to supplying Germany with Russian natural gas. And Germany is helping him.
Two huge new pipeline projects are being built, their necessity, costs and consequences deliberately withheld from the population, and information and opinions about the project deliberately manipulated through lobbying, personal contacts, bribery of at least one journalist, anti-Ukraine propaganda and economic, scientific, cultural and sports sponsorship, In short, as the authors describe it, through "strategic corruption". The origin and volume of money flowing from Russia for this purpose is concealed through foundations and institutes, while people guarantee the projects with dizzying sums (900 million euros plus interest on loans).
As soon as the last pipe was laid, Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Germany had become increasingly dependent on Russian gas, by 2021 sourcing around 65.4 percent of its gas imports from Russia, valued at 17.6 billion euros, around 6.5 billion more than the previous year. Furthermore, Germany's largest gas storage facility in Rheden (Lower Saxony) - strategically important for the gas supply to Germany and Western Europe - was sold to Gazprom. The taxpayer is once again liable for this with a state guarantee of 1.8 billion euros. By March 2022, all but 3 percent of this storage facility has been empty.
Steffen Dobbert is an editor at the German weekly magazine DIE ZEIT. Ulrich Thiele began his research on Nordstream 2 and the climate foundation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as a contributor to the German political magazine Cicero and was an investigative reporter at Business Insider from June 2023. This position was terminated and he is currently on leave of absence.
Both authors wrote the book independently of their respective newspaper editorial offices.
With the German gas money, on the other hand, Moscow has funded almost a third of its military spending in 2021. Germany has not only made Ukraine redundant as a gas transit country, it is also filling Putin's war chest on a daily basis.
Game, set and match for Putin
There were many opportunities to turn the tide, as Dobbert and Thiele prove. Warnings against the "Putin pipeline" came from Denmark and France, from Poland, the Baltic states and the USA, from the Russian resistance, from the German Armed Forces, from environmental associations, from TÜV and from the EU Parliament. EU official Klaus-Dieter Borchardt is also certain that if Germany had put Nord Stream 2 into operation, the EU would have filed a lawsuit against it.
Ukraine has been desperately trying to prevent this nightmare scenario since 2014. In October 2018, one of many delegations of Ukrainian energy suppliers once again warned emphatically that "Nord Stream 2 would make a major invasion of Ukraine by Russia very likely". Finally, they even went so far as to ask whether the Germans were aware that such an invasion would bring with it hundreds of thousands of refugees. The answer was along the lines of: they would have to calculate how many; in any case, they know how to handle the refugees.
Putin wanted the pipeline, and Putin got the pipeline. His willing executors were in Germany.
Crazier than a John Grisham thriller
The criminal energy, corruption and dirty tricks piled up here leaves the reader's head spinning: money laundering, tax evasion, bribery, poison attacks, contract killings, cyberattacks, Nato data on the internet, an unsolved assassination attempt on the pipeline, a plane being shot down, propaganda lies, covered-up environmental damage, even a German tax official burning a tax return in the fireplace! This is how the manual for "strategic corruption" reads as part of contemporary hybrid warfare. The final chapter is yet to be written.