AfD's Frohnmaier meets Gazprom's Miller in Moscow, calls for Nord Stream revival
A senior opposition lawmaker's Kremlin visit reopens the question of Russian gas flows at a moment when Berlin has built its supply policy on closing that door.
Markus Frohnmaier, foreign policy spokesman for Germany's Alternative for Germany party, met Alexei Miller, chief executive of Gazprom, in Moscow on Wednesday (2026-06-03) and called for the Nord Stream pipeline to be restarted, according to reports from both sides.6,3
The meeting also included Kirill Dmitriev, one of President Vladimir Putin's top economic advisers.5 Frohnmaier is the AfD's parliamentary group foreign policy chief, not a member of the federal government.4 His presence at Gazprom's headquarters nonetheless marks one of the more direct political contacts between a senior German opposition figure and Russia's state energy monopoly since the 2022 pipeline ruptures.
Nord Stream 1 and 2 were blown up on September 26th (2022), destroying the pipelines that had carried Russian gas across the Baltic to Germany.1 Both remain inoperable. Any serious effort to restore Russian gas flows to Germany would cut directly against the supply architecture Berlin has constructed over the past four years.
The ICE Endex TTF front-month contract rose 2.34% to €58.85/MWh on Monday (2026-07-20), though traders attributed the move to broader market factors rather than to the Moscow talks.6
Nord Stream 2 was designed as a twin pipeline system with capacity of 55 billion cubic metres a year, stretching 1,220 kilometres from the Russian coast via the Baltic to Greifswald.2 In the period before its completion, five European energy companies committed to fund 50% of the project's then-estimated €9.5 billion cost, with each contributing up to €950 million.2 The pipeline was never commercially commissioned before Germany suspended its approval process days before Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The original rationale for Nord Stream 2 was that Europe's domestic gas production is projected to halve over the next 20 years, and the pipeline would cover part of that supply gap.2 Those projections have not changed. What has changed is the political and regulatory environment under which any replacement would have to operate, and the degree to which European buyers have reorganised supply contracts around non-Russian sources.
Germany now receives no Russian pipeline gas. The European infrastructure built to compensate draws on Norwegian volumes, LNG imports, and additional pipeline flows from other directions. Any political momentum behind a Nord Stream revival would force market participants to reprice the tail risk of a partial policy reversal, even if the probability remains low.4
The AfD holds no seats in the federal government. The party polls second nationally, with elections due in September 2027. Frohnmaier does not set German energy policy. But the existence of a senior party figure calling for Russian gas restoration, and being received by Gazprom's chief executive in Moscow, is the kind of signal that European gas markets have generally chosen to ignore — a choice that carries its own pricing assumptions.6,5
No major German utility or industrial buyer has publicly signalled interest in restarting Russian flows. The industrial contraction of 2023 to 2025 reduced baseline gas consumption in German chemicals and manufacturing, which removes some of the urgency that once underpinned the Nord Stream 2 rationale.4
The geopolitical risk embedded in this story is not the meeting itself. It is the degree to which European gas pricing has fully discounted any scenario in which Russian supply returns, even partially, through a future political settlement. Frohnmaier's visit does not advance that scenario materially. Whether the AfD's position generates formal Bundestag debate or becomes an election campaign issue during the 2027 campaign will be a cleaner test of whether this remains a fringe position or starts pulling on mainstream German energy policy.5,1