Matthias Varnich – executive director of the Nord Stream 2 management company – met Putin in the 1980s when the Russian president was working in Dresden as a KGB agent
Matthias Warnig – a Putin-friendly German businessman and executive director of the now defunct Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline operator – in a rare interview, told German newspaper Die Zeit he talks about the meetings he had with the Russian president in Moscow after the start of the war in Ukraine.
Warnich is the only German citizen on the US sanctions list because of his ties to Russia and Putin. He very rarely gives interviews, writes the website Svoboda.org.
Matthias Varnich, who in Germany is called Putin’s friend, met Putin in the 1980s when the future Russian president, being a KGB agent, was working in Dresden.
“state secret”
According to Varnich, in the meetings he had with Putin, he tried to convince the Russian president to end the war against Ukraine. He had also asked Putin what the real goals of the so-called “special military operation” are. “You talk about Donetsk and Lugansk and at the same time your troops want to occupy Kyiv. How does this go along? Do you want Odessa or Kharkiv or the whole of Ukraine? Or something more?’ Varnich allegedly posed this question to Putin, to which the Russian president replied: “This is a state secret.” Varnich claims that in another conversation he told Putin that he cannot win the war.
According to what Varnich said, who in May under the pressure of public opinion together with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder left his position on the Board of Directors of (Russian oil company) Rosneft, rejected Putin’s proposal to go to stay in Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the Russian president was meeting with Varnich, but did not elaborate.
The interview is titled the words of Warnich himself, who says that at the moment he is toxic (“Ich bin toxisch”) in Germany and no one wants to have anything to do with him.
RES-EMP
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