Washington and Moscow explore selling Russian gas to Europe again

The United States and Russia are exploring a sale of Russian gas to Europe while the war in Ukraine continues, according to sources cited in an exclusive report^1,4. The talks are described at the level of exploration rather than agreement, and the report rests on unnamed sources¹.

The pipeline question is explicit in a second account. Jared Kushner and an envoy of President Vladimir Putin discussed bringing in a US investor for the Nord Stream pipelines, according to a report of the meeting². A third account says the two governments are discussing restarting the Nord Stream pipelines³. That account attributes the discussions to Trump’s team and its Russian counterparts³.

Who is in the room

Putin met the US special representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow¹. The reporting quotes a fragment on another asset: “On Lukoil, Steve [Witkoff] and Jared [Kushner] worked with DFC”, though the sources do not complete the description of what was worked on^1,2. Neither account says what stage the Lukoil discussion reached^1,2.

The same envoys appear on the Ukrainian side of the file, with Witkoff and Kushner named alongside President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in one account⁴. A commentary on the meetings says the Kremlin is offering billion-dollar economic deals to the two envoys, and notes that two of the businessmen involved are connected to Witkoff, his son Zach Witkoff, and Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr through a cryptocurrency firm⁵. The commentary describes the offers as economic deals put to the envoys during their visit, and names no amount beyond the billion-dollar framing in its own headline⁵.

What it means for investors

European gas pricing, the sanctions architecture and seaborne LNG demand all sit on the same question of whether Russian pipeline gas returns to the continent, and the reports put that question back on the table without answering it^1,3. Two of the accounts are versions of the same wire story, so the number of independent confirmations is smaller than the number of headlines^1,4.

The gaps are large. None of the accounts names the prospective US investor, a volume, a price, a timetable, or the sanctions relief that a restart would involve^1,2,3. Nor do they record any European government agreeing to buy^1,4. What is established is that two of Trump’s envoys met Putin in Moscow, that Nord Stream was discussed, and that the discussion included a US ownership role rather than a simple resumption of supply^1,2,3.