On the eve of the recent visit of Vladimir Putin to Helsinki, a presentation of my film about the Nord Stream gas pipeline took place there in the parliament of Finland. The crowd wasn’t very large – maybe 30 people.  However among the small audience was one of Nord Stream’s top representative in Finland, Sebastian Sass. Young, energetic, and self-assured to the point of cockiness, Sebastian had previously been an assistant to the former Prime Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen.  Lipponen, as our readers are aware, is the second head of state to leave politics and end up employed (indirectly) by the Russian government.  His duties include serving as the main interlocutor between the pipeline project and the Finnish government, “in order to expedite the fastest granting of permission from the government for the construction of a gas pipeline along the bottom of the Baltic Sea.“

I had telephoned mister Lipponen twice with a request to grant an interview and he had refused me twice. At the same time, they keep assuring me in every possible way that the company Nord Stream AG – is the most open company in the world.

But let’s get back to the presentation. Thank you, Sebastian Sass – he actually came, and didn’t make some excuse that he was too busy.

The moderator at the presentation was the leader of the Finnish
Green Party, European Parliament deputy Heidi Hautala (on 7 June she will
most likely once again be elected. At any rate, I wish her success in
this).  The film was shown, followed by a Q&A discussion with Marti Poutanen (Finnish Ministry of the Environment) the Estonian politicians Tapani Veistola and Paul Lettens, and several NGO representatives.

The first to speak, of course, was Sass. He said that one point of view
predominates in the film; that the project is good on all counts – in
particular, it is going to save Europe from that nasty coal, because
the electric power generating stations of Germany are going to convert
to the «green fuel» – gas. He also said that the company Nord Stream AG
is an unprecedentedly open company, just about the most open company in
the whole history of the existence of humanity. He also said that
neither Gerhard Schroeder nor Paavo Lipponen are lobbyists for the
project.

When it was my turn to speak, I said that:

1) it is genuinely laughable for me to hear that Schroeder and Lipponen
- are not lobbyists for the project. Then what were they hired for?

2)
I asked Sebastian to stop calling gas a «green fuel» going forward – he
might offend environmentalists;

3) the openness of the company,
unfortunately, has its limitations.

The next day, I and some friends from Swedish and Finnish television
took a trip to the city of Kotka. We came to the site where a plant is
being built for the fabrication of the cement blocks needed for laying
Nord Stream’s pipes along the Baltic seabed. Not far from there -
staging areas for storing the actual pipes.

Representatives of the French company EUPEC allowed us onto the site
only after a phone call to Sass in my name. They categorically refused
to give us their names, however, even though they were written right on
their helmets (I particularly liked the name T.Tonnensen). They refused
to be photographed. To all questions, even the most innocent ones
(what’s your name, what will the plant be producing, how can we see a
sample of your output, at least on a photo, etc.), they refused to
respond. But they did show us the pipe unloading wharf. They were being
offloaded from a vessel by the name of Don-3, flying the Maltese flag.
There are already hundreds of kilometers of pipe accumulated on the
wharfs in the port of Kotka.

- I ask the representative of the French
company what is the length of one of these pipes?

- That’s a question for the company Nord Stream (NS).

- What is the weight of one pipe?

- Ask NS.

- What is the thickness of one pipe?

- Ask NS.

- Where are the pipes from?

- Ask NS.

- How long have you been keeping watch over these pipes?

- Ask NS.

My dear friend Sebastian!  You can understand why it is difficult for journalists to agree that Nord Stream AG is the most open company in the world … perhaps compared to Gazprom there is an improvement, but projects of this scope merit a discussion with society.

In talking with these people I was reminded of the words of Garry Kasparov about how the project
may never happen. After what I saw in Kotka, I can say: the project can
not NOT happen. Because hundreds of millions, if not billions, of euros
have already been pumped into it pitching it, at least from a politcial angle. I think that going forward, the
initiators of the project and the owners – the recipients of Russian
gas can only put in yet more billions, because this will already turn
out to be cheaper. The project will happen, at any cost, and it seems that for the backers, among them Vladimir Putin, no price is too high.

Otherwise, what to do with the two thousand kilometers of pipe of the
Gryazovets-Vyborg pipeline already buried in the ground and the two and
a half thousand kilometers of pipes already prepared for the underwater
branches?

…By the way, it was being said even before Putin’s early June visit to
Helsinki that he was coming to – lobby for the project. The «not a
lobbyist» Lipponen would no doubt be someplace right nearby.

[The above article was written before Vladimir Putin's visit to
Helsinki, but we were unfortunately unable to post it until now. As a
result, Grigory Pasko has asked us to add the following afterword.]

At a press-conference in Helsinki, V.Putin somberly joked about how
the premier of Finland, it seemed, knows the problems with the Nord
Stream gas pipeline better than even HE HIMSELF does. VVP got the
impression that the Finnish premier had personally touched and felt
every single mine buried under the sea along the pipeline’s route.

I think that Putin knows about Nord Stream’s problems no worse than his
Finnish colleague. It’s another matter that the Finnish colleague is
not as deeply enmeshed in all kinds of behind-the-scenes secret little
games, which is why he blurted out a number no one had ever said aloud
before – 31 one mines that need to be disarmed. About the mines, Putin
pretended to just laugh it off. By he did say the main thing, as far as
he’s concerned: construction of the pipeline needs to be accelerated.
That’s exactly why he came to Helsinki in the first place, after all.
And this explains his little scare tactic in the form of information
that transit of gas through Ukraine could stop as early as the end of
June. As to his words about “any route” – lies. Because he really means
only ONE route – under the sea. Overland routes are categorically not
being looked at. I think that later VVP is going to fly to Stockholm to
fast-talk the Swedes, and then – to Turkey: to get the second branch of
the Blue Stream moving.

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