BERLIN, June 4 (Reuters) – A senior member of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) met one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top advisers as well as the head of energy group Gazprom and called for a reopening of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.
Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD’s parliamentary foreign policy spokesperson, is attending Putin’s showpiece economic conference in St Petersburg, defying warnings from Germany’s foreign ministry, which said it “explicitly advised the AfD against these trips”.
In posts on the social media platform X, Frohnmaier said he had met Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, on Wednesday.
Dmitriev, Miller and Gazprom are all subject to Western sanctions imposed over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Frohnmaier, who has called repeatedly for Germany to engage with Russia to resume energy supplies, said the meeting with Miller focused on the pipeline and a full resumption of Russian gas deliveries to Germany.
“Germany is caught in a severe economic downward spiral, and a key driver of this is the high cost of energy,” Frohnmaier said.
“That is why all options must be put back on the table, including the recommissioning of Nord Stream and the resumption of trade relations with Russia.”
Gazprom also confirmed the meeting with Frohnmaier.
“Looking forward to building a great FUTURE together with AfD, Germany’s most popular party,” Dmitriev wrote on his X account.
END OF RUSSIAN ENERGY HURT GERMAN ECONOMY, AFD ASCENDANT
For decades, Germany’s economic model was largely built on access to cheap Russian energy. Prior to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia supplied over a third of crude oil imports and more than half of its natural gas.
Germany has struggled to emerge from the shock caused by the shutdown of the undersea Nord Stream pipeline, which was crippled by explosions in September 2022 and left Berlin scrambling to find alternative supplies.
Nord Stream 1’s two pipelines were damaged in the blasts. Nord Stream 2, completed in 2021, has one intact pipeline, but Germany halted the project and it never began operations.
Russia has accused Ukraine of being behind the attack, though Kyiv has repeatedly denied any involvement.
Opinion polls show the AfD, currently the largest opposition party in parliament, building a lead over Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives, who lead a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats.
With two key state elections in eastern Germany in September, the AfD is hoping to win power for the first time in the state of Saxony-Anhalt and polls show it could also take the largest share of votes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The party, which has also made strong gains in recent elections in western Germany, has been critical of Merz’s strong support for Ukraine and says it would look to re-establish relations with Moscow.
“At a time when many seem more comfortable with confrontation than conversation, genuine dialogue matters more than ever,” Frohnmaier said on X after his meeting with Dmitriev.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in St Petersburg; Editing by Joe Bavier)
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