Hungary is getting oil again – now Putin is turning off the tap to Berlin

Since Putin took office at the latest, the management has also been used as a means of geopolitical pressure. Years before the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin was happy to restrict deliveries through the country in order to put pressure on Kiev – and increase prices.

Ukraine and Hungary bullied each other

His enemies also played this game. Since January, Ukraine itself has been using a leak that was supposedly difficult to repair as a reason to be Putin’s friend Viktor Orbán no more oil to be delivered. The actual reason, however, was that the EU was putting the brakes on the 90 billion loan for the war-torn country.

Since Orbán was voted out, this problem has been solved. Budapest the loan came through and now oil is flowing again. But now Germany suddenly has a problem: Just on Wednesday, when Brussels released the billion-dollar loan for Kiev, it suddenly said: Putin is now turning off the oil tap to the Germans.

Huge problem for Berlin

This is possible because there has been a dispute over the refinery in Germany for months Schwedt smolders. Until the Russian invasion, it belonged to 54 percent of the population Rosneftthe world’s fourth largest oil company, which is completely under the control of the The Kremlin stands. After Putin’s total invasion, they initially wanted to expropriate them, but shied away from doing so for fear of retaliation – the whole of Berlin depends on the refinery, and the kerosene for the capital’s airport also comes from there. A replacement by truck from southern Germany would be very expensive and time-consuming.

This was solved with a trust structure that gave Putin the income – the Federal Network Agency took over the operation, oil was only purchased via the Druzhba Kazakhstan.

But the problem has not disappeared, on the contrary. On Wednesday it became known that Russia wants to interrupt deliveries from Kazakhstan from May – this is quite easy because the line runs through Russian territory. Kazakhstan, which has close economic ties to Moscow, said that technical problems with the line through Ukrainian drones were to blame.

Putin is taking advantage of the situation on the oil market

Whether that is true is more than questionable. Rather, observers suspect that Putin wants to take advantage of the situation on the oil market to create global pressure. The USA has already granted the Kremlin an exemption from sanctions, which allows Putin’s oil giants to sell their black gold without penalty – this is a real windfall for Putin.

Russia has long wanted the same from Europe, which, with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia, has completely abandoned Russian oil. The high oil prices caused by the Iran war are already affecting the continent – a fuel crisis in Berlin would be another gift for Putin.