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.