By Irina Severin
What is so "productive" about Trump's phone call with Putin and Russia's rejection of Trump's ceasefire? Is it about Putin productively corrupting both Trump and Scholz?
It is a usual practice for Putin to bribe corrupt foreign politicians, often using hidden bearer shares inside the energy deals. Otherwise, it would be inexplicable why Trump and Scholz would agree to a deal benefiting only Russia when Putin attacks an ally - Ukraine and wages a hidden warfare of attrition against both the US and the West, including Germany.
Why are the deals secret and not discussed publicly if they are not utterly corrupt? It is clear that Ukraine and peace negotiations are used as a pretext and a bargaining chip in the secret corrupt dealings that make Russia great but eliminate the US and the West's influence.
Bellow, there is an investigation by Stories, Google translated from Russian. Original: https://shorturl.at/3W0ag
"Russians and Americans clap their hands." Moscow, Berlin, and Washington discuss resuming supplies of raw materials to Germany's Rosneft refineries.
13 Mar 2025
The authorities of Germany, Russia and the United States are discussing the resumption of oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline to Germany, investigators from the Correctiv publication have found out with the participation of Important Stories.
To do this, American firms will buy out Rosneft Deutschland's German subsidiary's share (54.17%) in the PCK oil refinery in the city of Schwedt near the border between Germany and Poland, say sources familiar with the negotiations.
The refinery was launched under the GDR in 1961 and was supplied with crude from Russia via Druzhba until the full-scale war in Ukraine. Its capacity is 11.5 million tons of oil per year; the company reports that nine out of 10 cars in Berlin and Brandenburg today run on gasoline made by PCK.
In September 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government took temporary management of the refinery and planned to nationalize it. Since then, the plant has been supplied via a backup pipeline and the same Druzhba with crude from the ports of Rostock and Gdansk, as well as transit through Russia from Kazakhstan. However, alternative routes were less profitable from the start.
In addition, the US is interested in purchasing Rosneft’s shares in Germany’s second largest oil refinery, Miro (24%), and in Bayernoil’s oil refinery (28.57%) in the south of the country.
Business Insider estimated the value of all these Rosneft assets in Germany at 8 billion euros. At the end of February, the German government confirmed that Rosneft Deutschland really wants to sell off the assets in the country and complete the deals before the next extension of the temporary management, that is, until September 2025.
Previously, the media and authorities named companies from Qatar and Kazakhstan among potential buyers of these refineries. At the end of last year, Vladimir Putin even publicly announced his intention to sell the plant in Schwedt to a Kazakh operator , but Astana rejected the offer. And already at the beginning of 2025, the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked an oil pumping station in Kuban, through which oil from Kazakhstan was delivered to Europe, and thus reduced the volume of deliveries.
According to Correctiv sources, US and Russian representatives are currently negotiating the sale of the refinery with the participation of the office of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the German Ministry of Finance. At the same time, the German Foreign Ministry, headed by a representative of the Green Party and a long-standing opponent of the supply of non-renewable resources from Russia, Annalena Baerbock, has been excluded from the process.
The Schwedt refinery is one of the most important employers for the German federal state of Brandenburg, which also supplied raw materials to a large part of northeastern Germany. Therefore, not only the Kremlin-loyal Alternative for Germany and the Sahra Wagenknecht Union parties, but also the head of Brandenburg, the Social Democrat Dietmar Woidke, advocated the resumption of Russian oil supplies to Schwedt.
With America's help, Germany can resume purchases of not only Russian oil, but also gas. Washington is interested in restarting Nord Stream 2, one of whose threads was blown up in the fall of 2022, presumably by Ukrainian saboteurs (the investigation, however, does not announce this version as the final one).
One of the Kremlin's top negotiators with the US, Kirill Dmitriev, told CNN that the countries could discuss "energy deals." The Financial Times wrote that the Trump administration wants to invest in restarting the pipeline because it is a "strategic asset" that can be used to establish peace.In addition, Nord Stream 2 operator Nord Stream 2 AG confirmed to a Swiss court in January that it was “in intensive negotiations with investors.”
These negotiations have been underway in Switzerland for several weeks, the Bild newspaper reported . According to Western media, the director of Nord Stream AG, former GDR Stasi counterintelligence officer and Putin's friend Matthias Warnig and former US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell are taking part in them.
Correctiv investigators have found out that the fate of Russian assets may be decided right now in the US. While Kyiv and Washington were negotiating a 30-day truce at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, a high-ranking representative of the German government flew to the US, but the exact purpose of his visit is unknown.
One of the participants in the meetings says that the tone of the negotiations is set by the US, and the participation of German officials is kept to a minimum. The US president's plan could look like a "pincer" for the EU: weaken the German auto industry by introducing huge import tariffs and at the same time earn money in the EU by pumping raw materials from Russia through American infrastructure.
"The Russians and Americans are clapping their hands. Some sell raw materials, others supply them, and the Europeans pay for everything," one of the participants in the negotiations said on condition of anonymity.
An important condition of the deal could be Vladimir Putin's consent to a temporary truce in Ukraine. This will give him the opportunity to use the money received from the sale of oil and gas to replenish the military budget during the truce.
The full version of the investigation in German is on the Correctiv website
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