“Russians and Americans Are Clapping Their Hands”

The authorities of Germany, Russia, and the USA are discussing the resumption of oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to Germany, investigators from the Correctiv publication, with the participation of IStories, have found out.

For this purpose, American firms will buy out Rosneft Deutschland’s, a German subsidiary of Rosneft, share (54.17%) in the oil refinery PCK in the city of Schwedt near the German-Polish border, say sources familiar with the negotiations.

The PCK refinery was launched back in the GDR in 1961 and, before the full-scale war in Ukraine, was supplied with raw materials from Russia via Druzhba. Its capacity is 11.5 million tons of oil per year; the company reports that 9 out of 10 cars in Berlin and Brandenburg today are filled with gasoline made by the Schwedt refinery. 

In September 2022, the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz took the refinery under temporary management and planned to nationalize it. Since then, the plant has been supplied via a backup pipeline and the same Druzhba with raw materials from the ports of Rostock and Gdansk, as well as in transit through Russia from Kazakhstan. However, alternative routes have been less profitable from the very beginning.

In addition, the U.S. is interested in buying Rosneft’s stakes in Germany’s second-largest refinery Miro (24%) and in the Bayernoil 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 does indeed want to sell off assets in the country and complete the transactions before the next date for extending the temporary administration — that is, before September 2025.

Previously, media and authorities named companies from Qatar and Kazakhstan among the potential buyers of these refineries. At the end of last year, Vladimir Putin even publicly stated his intentions to sell the Schwedt refinery to a Kazakh operator, but Astana declined the offer. And already at the beginning of 2025, the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck an oil pumping station in Kuban, through which oil from Kazakhstan flowed to Europe, thus reducing the volume of supplies.

According to Correctiv sources, representatives of the U.S. and Russia 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 Annalena Baerbock, a representative of the Green Party and a long-time opponent of the supply of non-renewable resources from Russia, was 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 significant part of northeastern Germany. Therefore, not only the pro-Kremlin parties Alternative for Germany and Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, but also the head of Brandenburg, Social Democrat Dietmar Woidke, advocated for the resumption of Russian oil supplies to Schwedt.

With the help of America, Germany can resume purchases of not only Russian oil, but also gas. Washington is interested in restarting Nord Stream 2, one of the lines of which was blown up in the fall of 2022 by allegedly Ukrainian saboteurs (the investigation, however, does not present this version as final).

One of the Kremlin’s main representatives in negotiations with the U.S., Kirill Dmitriev, told CNN that the countries could discuss “energy deals.” Financial Times wrote that the Trump administration wants to invest in restarting the gas pipeline, as it is a “strategic asset” that can be used to establish peace.

These negotiations have been ongoing in Switzerland for several weeks, reported the newspaper Bild. According to Western media, the participants include Nord Stream AG director Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi officer and friend of Putin, and former U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell.

Correctiv investigators have discovered that the fate of Russian assets may be being decided right now in the U.S. While Kyiv and Washington were agreeing on a 30-day truce at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, a high-ranking representative of the German government flew to the States, however, the exact purpose of his visit is unknown.

One of the meeting participants says that the US is setting the tone in the negotiations, and the participation of German officials is minimal. The U.S. president’s plan may look like a “pincer” for the EU: weaken the German automotive industry by introducing huge import tariffs and at the same time profit in the EU from 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,” reasons one of the negotiators on condition of anonymity.

An important condition of the deal could be Vladimir Putin’s agreement to a temporary truce in Ukraine. This will allow him to use the proceeds 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