The Russians sure know how to play the game.
Today, they called on Germany’s ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder - out of a job for just under two weeks - to join the board of directors of North European Gas Pipeline. NEGP is a joint venture of the German concerns E.ON and BASF and the Russian gas giant Gazprom that is dedicated to building a pipeline running through the Baltic Sea to pump natural gas from Siberia to Central Europe.
Schröder, as German chancellor, was been instrumental in arranging deal. And rumor has it that Vlad Putin was behind the push to get his old pal a job.
The pipeline is generally considered a masterpiece of Russian power politics: Since Germany relies on Russia for 35% of its natural gas, land pipelines - constructed during the last years of the Cold War - run through the now independent Baltic states, Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. A direct line through the international waters of the Baltic would bypass these potentially difficult “middlemen” - a fact that has already embittered the Polish-German relationship.
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