During their visit to Kyiv in September, US President Donald Trump’s envoys urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider restarting the pipelines that once carried Russian gas to Europe, The New York Times reported on 17 October. They presented it as part of a peace deal with Russia. In the weeks that followed, they pressed the idea with European officials, while Washington freed Russian diesel and spared Russia’s oil buyers from new US penalties.

Energy sales fund Russia’s war, and Ukraine’s halt of transit in January 2025 left TurkStream as Gazprom’s only pipeline route into the EU. Meanwhile, Russia has kept bombing Ukraine’s grid through the energy truce Washington declared on 11 October.

The pitch in Kyiv

Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner put the idea to Zelenskyy when they met him in Kyiv, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the talks. Trump officials argued that transit fees, which Ukraine gave up at about $1 billion a year, would benefit Kyiv, and that European voters would eventually want cheaper energy. Russia’s share of EU gas imports had fallen from 45% in 2021 to 13% last year.

The envoys presented renewed Russian gas sales as one of the economic incentives in a wider settlement covering Russia’s relationship with NATO, security guarantees for Ukraine, and territorial control. Some European and Ukrainian officials suspected Washington would seek a cut of the profits. The White House denied that the Nord Stream pipeline had been a subject of recent discussions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that resuming energy cooperation is in Russia’s interest and, right now, even more in Europe’s.

Germany pushes back

At Ukraine talks the envoys hosted in Florida last week, Günter Sautter, security adviser to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, forcefully opposed the idea. German lawmakers have called a return to Russian deliveries a disaster for European security, even treason, as the far-right AfD courts Gazprom to bring the gas back. Former Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who steered Germany off Russian gas after 2022, said Trump “seems to have more sympathies with Vladimir Putin than he has with the Ukrainians.”

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One concession after another

Rather than pressure Putin or strengthen Ukraine, the administration has spent much of its peace effort on economic incentives for Russia, the newspaper wrote. The US Treasury cleared imports of Russian diesel on 9 October. On 16 October, Trump waived the penalties on Russia’s oil buyers that Congress had passed in the Graham Act. Washington is also weighing relief for sanctioned shadow fleet tankers. And the White House ordered limits on the military satellite service Ukraine’s forces rely on, Reuters reported.

Putin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev claimed the ice had broken and more joint initiatives would follow, including data centers powered by Russian nuclear energy. The talks also cover the sale of Lukoil’s foreign assets to a group that includes the US government, the newspaper reported earlier this month. Zelenskyy, who had heard the pitch in Kyiv, alluded to it in a Financial Times interview this week.

“The question will be when will the next deal be? Maybe it will be gas. Definitely it will be gas,” he said.

Reopening the pipelines could hand Moscow back significant revenue and strengthen its sway over Europe’s energy market, Liga noted. Each new concession lowers the price Russia pays for continuing the war.

A court in Pula ruled that Ukrainian diving instructor Volodymyr Zhuravliov may be extradited to Germany over the September 2022 blasts that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany and caused major leaks in the Baltic Sea, RBC-Ukraine reported, citing his lawyers.

A Polish court refused to extradite Zhuravliov last year, but its ruling did not cancel Germany’s EU-wide arrest warrant. Croatia could therefore arrest him and decide Germany’s request for itself. The pipelines at the center of the case were built to carry Russian gas to Germany while bypassing Ukraine.

The firm Katerynchuk, Moor & Partners said it expected to receive the written ruling shortly and was preparing to challenge it in Croatia’s appellate court and before international judicial bodies. Zhuravliov also plans to announce an indefinite hunger strike. His lawyers said the Croatian court had disregarded the earlier Polish decision.

The Warsaw court refused to surrender Zhuravliov in October 2025, finding that the pipelines could be treated as a legitimate military target during an armed conflict. It released him from custody.

His Polish lawyer, Tymoteusz Paprocki, said Zhuravliov understood that the ruling applied only within Poland: under a European arrest warrant, the country where a suspect is arrested decides whether to send them to the country seeking them.

Germany amended the warrant in early September to add a war-crime classification, according to Zhuravliov’s lawyers. The change prompted the Croatian court to postpone an earlier hearing. The lawyers’ account of the amendment has not been independently confirmed.

How the Nord Stream case reached Croatia

Nord Stream 1 and 2 were built to carry Russian gas directly to Germany while bypassing Ukraine. Explosions on 26 September 2022 damaged three of their four lines; Nord Stream 2 had never entered service.

Germany issued a warrant for Zhuravliov in 2024. German prosecutors say he helped place explosives on the pipelines near Denmark’s Bornholm island. He denies involvement. Croatian police arrested him in Pula on 19 August 2026 under the European warrant.

Another Ukrainian suspect, Serhii Kuznietsov, was arrested in Italy in 2025 and later sent to Germany, where prosecutors have charged him over the explosions. He denies involvement. No court has established who ordered the attack.

Germany's far-right AfD has confirmed it is in talks with Gazprom to bring Russian gas back to Germany. Its foreign-policy speaker met the Russian gas giant's chief in Moscow to discuss resuming supplies, a step that would reverse the break with Russian energy Germany made after the 2022 invasion, the party told DW.

The AfD is openly working to undo one of the West's central responses to the war. Before 2022, Russia supplied about 55 percent of Germany's gas, a dependence federal officials later blamed for Berlin's slow initial reaction to the invasion.

Cutting it cost Moscow its biggest European market. Restoring it would hand back one of its largest revenue streams at a time when energy sales fund the war.

The Kremlin has already publicly welcomed the AfD’s efforts to engage in dialogue with Moscow. Dmitriy Peskov, press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has also reacted positively to the party’s growing popularity.

The AfD confirms the Moscow talks

The confirmation came from Beatrix von Storch, deputy leader of the AfD's Bundestag faction.

The party's foreign-policy speaker, Markus Frohnmaier, was in Moscow and personally spoke with Mr. Miller of Gazprom, she said, referring to Alexei Miller, the company's chairman.

"Of course, we are interested in resuming trade. We need affordable energy and the widest possible supply, so we consider it in our interest to get supplies from Russia too, which is why we are holding these talks," she said.

The politics run through the east

The talks land as the AfD surges at the polls, topping recent votes in eastern Germany and in Berlin, contests in which Russia's war against Ukraine figured in the party's platform. Asked what signal those results send Moscow, von Storch cast the war less as foreign policy than as a domestic worry.

"Of course, it is an important topic. People fear war and that Germany will be drawn into it, let itself be drawn in, or directly enter it," she said.