Schoroder has a “mouth-piece” contract...to simply talk for the company...supposedly in the $3-$4 million a year range. To be honest...the guy didn’t ever clean up big as a politician or a lawyer...so he is trying to make an ample income now after leaving politics. No one much in German politics listens to the guy now...and in the German business community he is a virtual zero. Its difficult to see how the Russians can find reasoning to pay an idiot money for getting nothing accomplished (except when he was chancellor).
As for this pipeline episode...I’m betting on unscheduled maintenance and the Russians don’t want to admit that it was a major breakage somewhere. Unlike the idiots in South America who advertise far and wide on every breakage...the Russians tend to keep their mouth shut and just fix the problem.
I’m with #8, this just doesn’t make much sense in “Great Game” terms. They have no reason to be mad at Germany and no reason to want their continental customers think they like to jerk them around for fun. They’re not the only game in town after all.
The russkies have a long-standing mania for covering up their boo-boos (see the classic “Uncovering Soviet Disasters” by space-guy James F. Oberg from 20 years ago). I think it’s maintenance or breakage and the ivans are reflexively covering up.
Perhaps the payments now for useless service if really payment for previous valuable “service” received while he was chancellor...