Scholz dismisses ‘specious’ Russian argument over Nord Stream gas turbine

Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz has suggested that Russian war politics, not German engineering, is responsible for a drastic reduction in gas flowing through the undersea Nord Stream pipeline.

Russia’s state-owned Gazprom has blamed its supply cut in recent weeks — now just one-fifth of regular flow — on delays in returning a gas turbine from maintenance in Canada.

Mr Scholz begged to differ on Wednesday, holding a press conference alongside the turbine in question in western Germany. At the headquarters of Siemens Energy, company officials said the turbine had been returned from maintenance in Canada a week ago and they were waiting for it to be claimed by Gazprom.

“Nothing is standing in the way of its transport to Russia apart from the Russian recipient has to communicate it wants it and provide the necessary information for customs,” said Mr Scholz.

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Gazprom halted the operation of one of the last two operating turbines in late July due to its “technical condition” and said it was awaiting replacements from a Siemens subsidiary in Canada.

Berlin dismissed what it called “specious” arguments and said limiting supplies was a “political” response to the West’s support for Ukraine.

After high-level transatlantic diplomacy, Canada agreed to transport the turbine back to Germany to sidestep sanctions on Russia.

Siemens officials said on Wednesday that the refurbished turbine had been scheduled to be installed in September, replacing another operational turbine, and that they could see “no technical reason” why Gazprom had not yet accepted it back.

Hours after the Siemens press conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Gazprom was awaiting written confirmation that the serviced turbine would not be hit with sanctions on its transport back to Russia.

Basis for a ceasefire

Earlier on Wednesday, Stern magazine released a lengthy interview with ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who said, after meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week, that the Kremlin was interested in a “negotiated solution” with Ukraine.

Mr Schröder, a two-term Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader until 2005 and friend of Mr Putin, suggested the deal brokered by the UN and Turkey to reopen Black Sea shipping routes could become the basis for a ceasefire agreement. But any peace talks, he added, would require both sides to make concessions.

Mr Schröder said it was “simply false” to think that Ukraine could ever reclaim Crimea from Russia and suggested the best way to peace for Ukraine’s eastern regions would be “a solution along the lines of the Swiss canton model” of semi-autonomous provinces.

Pressed in the interview, Mr Schröder refused to condemn the Russian president over the war in Ukraine but said he considered the war itself “a mistake on the part of the Russian government”.

“I do not have to therefore constantly play the role of the outraged, others can do that,” he said.

In response to Mr Schröder’s suggestions of making concessions for a peace deal, Ukraine presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed the retired German politician as a “voice of the Russian royal court”.

“If Moscow wants dialogue, the ball is in its court,” wrote Mr Podolyak on Twitter. “First — a ceasefire and withdrawal of troops, then — constructive [dialogue].”