Sunday Wire Radio Show Archives

LISTEN LIVE ON THIS PAGE – START TIMES:

5pm-8pm UK Time | 12pm-3pm EST (US) | 9am-12pm PST (US)

This week on the SUNDAY WIRE, host Patrick Henningsen returns this week with our regularly scheduled program. This may have been Zelensky’s worst week yet since his political reality show “Servant of the People” began. After throwing his toys out the pram after hearing US was going to release Russian diesel, the Little Green Goblin of Kiev has decided to verbally attack Trump, and defy Washington by launching more terrorist attacks inside of Russia. Meanwhile, no less than 30 Gen Z youth protests and riots have broken out in at least 15 country, with that number growing by the hour. Riots in France seem to be the catalyst, as the you begin to connect their domestic austerity with their wasteful governments’ geopolitical antics in places like Ukraine, Palestine and Iran. What will unpopular elites do now? Later in the Overdrive hour, we’re joined by teammates Bryan “Hesher”McClain, Adam “Ruckus” Clark, and Basil Valentine for deeper look into these and other breaking developments. All this and more…

SUPPORT OUR PLATFORM AND JOIN OUR 21WIRE COMMUNITY @21WIRE.TV

This month’s featured music artists: The Real Anthem Band, Joseph Arthur, Peyoti for President, Peter Conway & Red Rumble, and Phil Zimmerman

WATCH IT LIVE ON YOUTUBE, X, RUMBLE, FACEBOOK AND HERE:

.
Listen to latest available audio upload here:

Download latest episode here

NOTE: Our weekly show will be available in podcast recording after the LIVE program, here at 21WIRE and on all major podcasting platforms (see links below).

Sunday Wire Radio Show Archives

Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone rips the cover off the media deceptions and atrocity hoaxes Israel pushed after October 7 to create political space for its gruesome assault on the Gaza Strip. Blumenthal exposes the US mainstream media’s role as a megaphone for the Israeli government, introducing new lies even after their initial ones were debunked. Atrocity Inc raises serious questions about the official narrative of October 7, while revealing how Israel’s army has consciously engaged in the same hideous atrocities which it falsely accused Palestinian militants of committing. Watch:

.
Run time: 44 minutes
Written by: Max Blumenthal and Sut Jhally
Directed & Edited by: Sut Jhally
Produced by: Max Blumenthal and Ahmad Hussam
Production: The Grayzone and Propaganda & Co

SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE

READ MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE Palestine FILES

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Dialogue Works host Nima Alkhorshid talks with 21st Century Wire’s Patrick Henningsen about these and other crucial details in this story. Watch:

.
READ MORE YEMEN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Yemen Files

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Sir Julian Rose

Most meaningful conversations questioning what drives the malign forces controlling our planet do not examine the degree to which political, military and religious leadership has chosen to turn to dark, and Satanic forces—in their craving for absolute power, prestige and wealth.

After saturation of the ‘official’ version of the events of 9/11 carried by mainstream media to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of the destruction of the Twin Towers, one can testify to the extent of the globally coordinated grand deception that was put together to try to befool us into accepting the mainstream reporting of this event.

What becomes increasingly clear is the degree to which the majority of the population are prepared to live the lie—and that this lie covers the full spectrum of mechanisms governing our daily lives: 21st-century civilisation.

What do I mean by this?

I mean that the deception that underlies the ‘official version’ of 9/11 events and the subsequent inception of ‘the war on terror ’ penetrates all aspects of contemporary top-down governance and therefore colours every aspect of our lives.  And since life is a dynamic event, nothing remains static. So unless a wave of consciousness raises our awareness and enables us to seriously influence the status quo, everything gets worse.

This calculated life distortion incorporates a paranormal level. A Masonic activation.

To illustrate the point, two aspects of 9/11 provide irrefutable evidence of the grand deception built into the event and the way it was reported.

Firstly, we witnessed live coverage of a BBC announcer describing the collapse of the third building while it is plainly visible, untouched in the background, as seen through the glass window of the studio.  The newsreader simply got out of sync with her script, and the not-yet-detonated third building was still standing, unscathed, as she announced its collapse.

The second example – and there are many more others will remember—is that the towers came down in just 7 seconds. Expert engineers testified that this could only be achieved by a professionally executed controlled demolition.

The macabre series of events of 11 September (11 = twin towers) 2001 extends into every aspect of the genocide. Film crews were perfectly in place to record what looks to be a plane flying into the second tower.  I remember the calm voice of the BBC newsreader announcing, “And now we see a plane is hitting the second tower”.

All this has strong occult overtones.  The event was, I believe, prepared and performed with the aid of paranormal forces working in tandem with a Masonic priesthood, made up of those in high positions of government and the military.

George Bush’s completely unperturbed ‘non-reaction’ on receiving the news while addressing a group of school children reveals a key piece of evidence concerning the role played by non-sentient, psychopathic individuals within the masterminding of such incidents.

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

– John F. Kennedy, in an address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

Demons are real. Very real. They are not human, but can be induced to enter humans via high ritual Masonic practices and other such enticements of Satanic forces in secretive centres of dark worship.

Masons have access to a huge number of ‘lodges’, particularly in North America and Europe. They appear, on the surface, to be benign, even socially engaged, establishments. Many participants of the lower order have no idea what goes on at the top and strongly deny any wrongdoing.

IMAGE: Rituals in Secret Societies (Image Credit: Wikicommons via BBC)

Now enlarge that general level of ignorance into the workings of society as a whole, and you will see that this is how the majority see those who imprison them, politically, militarily and psychologically. It’s the same theatre in both cases.

‘The War on Terror’ announced by George Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 should more aptly be named ‘the war of terror’, for that is how the ‘elite’/occult partnership achieves its ambitions. Everything is turned into an inversion of its true self, spreading fear as the underlying emotional factor.

Witness how Saddam Hussein was falsely accused of being in direct possession of weapons of mass destruction when, in reality, there were no such weapons, and much of his reign involved supporting his people in food and water restoration projects, not posing any direct threat to the West.

Witness how Russia was turned into the chief villain of our times by fabricated stories of its hegemonic interests and then the deliberate taunting by NATO, overtly breaking its stated pledge to never move further East that the line of the Berlin Wall.

Witness the World Health Organisation declaring a global pandemic and mass lockdown on zero empirical evidence of a deadly ‘coronavirus ’.

Cast your mind back to the Netanyahu decree that only the obliteration of Gaza and the eradication of the Palestinian people would atone for the breakout and resulting killings of October 7^th 2023. Recall that Netanyahu declared ‘it is God’s will’ for such a vast genocide of innocent men, women and children to be perpetrated.

Witness how Trump’s plans to create peace in Gaza turned out to be plans to turn it into a property development racket with not a Palestinian in sight.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of recent overt reversals of our innate human aspiration for justice, peace and love – proclaiming instead the complete inversion of these, including the inversion of the pursuit of truth.

Most meaningful conversations questioning what drives the malign forces controlling our planet do not examine the degree to which political, military and religious ‘leadership’ has chosen to turn to Satanic forces in their craving for absolute power, prestige and wealth.

The cowardly and completely irrational ‘fear of Israel’ which – amongst other things – causes no serious action to be taken by wealthy Western nations to block the radical Zionist inspired bloodbath of Gaza and the forced evacuation of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, is an expression of how far a subconscious acceptance of evil has penetrated political institutions, banking, military and technocratic state authorities. Ultimately finding its way into the feeble minds of ordinary citizens.

There is a reluctance of many ‘down the rabbit hole’ activists to see that the transhuman ideal promoted by the World Economic Forum (Yuval Noah Harari) and the recent explosion of AI robotics have their source in the same anti-life cult that conceived and executed the 9/11 monster.

Here one has to be open to recognising the existence of an otherworldly dimension of inverted and twisted values that are used to deliberately distort the wave patterns of natural human communication and then present the distorted outcomes as ‘the reality’. To the extent that society as a whole now operates according to a fake version of what we term ‘real’ or ‘true life’.

The New World Order, Great Reset, Agenda 2030, Net Zero agendas are all based upon a collaboration with these same other dimensional, sycophantic, insentient, anti-life entities.

A negative energy which has been explicitly invited to operate through the medium of individual earthbound humans. Those who call upon such entities to give them power over sentient, empathetic members of the human race, and to thereby control the destiny of the planet.

The great majority of mankind has utterly failed to recognise and counteract this highly destructive practice. That is why things are as bad as they are.

Since Donald Trump became president of the United States, we have become accustomed to witnessing the resulting megalomania firsthand. Trump’s pick of hard-nosed, ruthless billionaires given executive positions in his cabinet has pushed such megalomania ever further into our midst.

This is not to ignore Elon Musk’s claim to rule the world along with Bill Gates, BlackRock, the City of London and that clique of Silicon Valley super egos who coolly create their toxic soup of binary digital abstractions and seductively smart ‘bots’.

None of this expresses Life, in the genuinely human understanding of this word. It is an imposed Matrix devised by subhuman entities devoid of an emotional flow and with hearts of stone.

We sentient, warm, empathetic humans are the last true representatives of the life gifted to us by a benign universal power. We chose to nurture our powers of discernment, responsibility and love, and not to sell our souls to the materialistic/hedonistic enticements on sale in every corner of the world.

We are therefore keepers of an irreplaceable gift which gives us the power to fight for the redemption and expansion of the very uncorrupted and omnipotent life force which the demonic entities wish to drive into extinction and replace on this planet with soulless tech-infused human replicas: ‘transhumans’.

They worship advanced technology as their god, their master. It is the weapon of choice for the takeover of our living, breathing, radiant planet. We, sentient empathetic humans, are its one line of resistance. They know our powers are greater than theirs, but count on convincing us that this is not the case.

Their most dangerous weapon is the perpetual ‘provocation of fear’, followed by the enticement of humans into a seductive and energy-sapping fascination/addiction to convenience and comfort: ‘Smart Syndrome’ as symbolised by the all-singing, dancing Smart Phone.  Just consider how much easier it has made ‘getting on with life as usual’ in the status quo.

The combination of these has proved a near-lethal cocktail for checkmating the dynamic of human evolution.

But here we are, and every day we are made increasingly aware of the existence of a self-imposed and externally imposed dilemma – as well as of our latent power to exercise a dynamic that puts us back in touch with our universal spiritual origins and upwardly rising evolutionary instincts, of which love and deep respect for life are paramount.

We are the red line beyond which the vampiric stealers of our energy will not pass. Be fully prepared to stand firm and to be the vanguard of the new resistance. This is our prerogative, our responsibility, our imperative – and by acting together, we can be confident of a great victory.

Naomi Klein put it very simply in a recent interview about her and Astra Taylor’s latest book, ‘End Times Fascism ‘: “We have to find our places of love and fight like hell”.

I call on all of us to join the resistance, because it’s nothing less than a fight to save the glorious, multifarious and vibrant expressions of Life on Earth.

This struggle for Life is what defines humanity from inhumanity and always will. Let no one stand passively on the sidelines while evolution itself is being put into reverse.

Sir Julian Rose is the author of ‘In Defence of Life’, John Hunt Publications, Earth Books, UK. He is an early pioneer of organic farming, a widely read essayist, broadcaster and international activist. Visit www.julianrose.info. Books can be purchased by contacting Julian directly: see ‘contact author’ under ‘reviews’. 

READ MORE GREAT RESET NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE Great Reset FILES

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Host Danny Haiphong discusses these critical geopolitical issues with 21st Century Wire’s Patrick Henningsen and Deep Dive host Lt Col Daniel Davis. Watch: 

.
READ MORE YEMEN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Yemen Files

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Deep Dive host Lt Col Daniel Davis speaks with Patrick Henningsen about these and other key aspect of conflict in Ukraine. Watch:

.
READ MORE YEMEN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Yemen Files

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Consortium News weekly program, The World This Week with host Joe Lauria, talks with guests Patrick Henningsen and Ray McGovern. Watch: 

.
READ MORE UKRAINE NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE UKRAINE FILES

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Along Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, Israeli soldiers concealed themselves inside Palestinian homes and established invisible kill zones. Civilians, including children, were shot for approaching or crossing unmarked boundaries. Military records then counted the dead as terrorists “eliminated.”

The Netzarim Corridor runs across central Gaza immediately south of Gaza City, from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean. Israeli forces established it during their ground invasion, dividing northern Gaza from the rest of the territory. They widened the zone by demolishing surrounding neighbourhoods and building military bases, fortified positions and observation posts.

It was here, amid the civilian communities bordering this military corridor, that Israeli soldiers operated concealed positions inside Palestinian homes. The buildings looked abandoned or ordinary from outside, and Palestinians approaching them could not see the troops or the imaginary boundaries soldiers had drawn around their positions. Crossing one of those invisible lines could mean death.

Israeli soldiers had a name for occupying a Palestinian home and turning it into a concealed military position. Almenat Kash, Hebrew for “Straw Widow.”

Inside the Straw Widow

Straw Widow is a longstanding Israeli military tactic in which soldiers seize a Palestinian home and turn it into an observation post, firing position or ambush site. Families can be confined to one room as troops occupy the rest of the building, restrict contact with the outside and prepare positions from which they can watch or fire.

A reservist who spent about 250 days in Gaza told Der Spiegel how his unit used the tactic in areas that had not been evacuated. Palestinians continued moving through the surrounding streets with no warning that soldiers were hidden nearby. When they approached, the troops attacked them. Those who stepped forward to help were often attacked too.

“Within minutes, five, six or seven people are killed,” he said.

The military report would record seven terrorists eliminated.

“But no,” the soldier said. “It’s just seven people who crossed an intersection.”

The report did more than conceal how they died. It stripped the dead of their civilian identity and turned their deaths into proof of military success. “We don’t kill, we eliminate,” the reservist explained. “That’s how we’ve always put it.”

Another reservist described occupying a house while serving with Division 252 along the Netzarim Corridor. It belonged to displaced Palestinians and stood on the edge of an inhabited neighbourhood. Around their position, the soldiers established a boundary that Palestinians could not see.

VIDEO: An Israeli reservist describes arbitrary killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor. (Source: Sky News)

.
The Palestinians were somehow expected to know where it was.

“There’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know,” the soldier said. “But how can they know?”

He recalled one man crossing the boundary and being shot. Another approached the body and was detained. Hours later, the order changed again. Anyone crossing the invisible line was to be shot on sight.

The person approaching might be “a teenager riding his bicycle.” The command made no distinction. “Everyone that comes inside needs to die.”

Breaking the Silence collected similar accounts of lethal boundaries. One captain described people crossing a line as “sentenced to death.” Another reservist described the order in three words, “Adult, male, kill.”

Everyone Became a Terrorist

A Division 252 soldier recalled how his unit opened fire after guards spotted someone approaching from the south. They poured dozens of bullets into him and kept shooting at his body, some laughing as they fired. Only when the troops approached did they discover they had killed a boy of about 16.

The soldiers photographed the body and took the boy’s telephone, which an intelligence officer collected. Hours later, they were told he was not a Hamas operative. By that evening, however, the battalion commander was congratulating them for killing a terrorist and saying he hoped they would kill ten more the following day. A soldier who protested that the boy had been unarmed and looked like a civilian was shouted down. The commander’s answer left no room for what they had discovered. Anyone crossing the line was a terrorist. No exceptions. No civilians.

No independently verified death toll exists for the Netzarim Corridor. The Israeli military claimed that Division 252 had killed more than 200 militants there, but soldiers who served in the corridor dismantled that account from within. An officer in the division’s command said the Israeli military’s own intelligence associated only ten of the dead with Hamas. Other soldiers described how civilians and children were shot for crossing invisible lines, then entered into the count as terrorists.

Even those ten were designated by Israel rather than an independent investigation, and an alleged association with Hamas would not establish that they were taking part in hostilities when killed. The claim of more than 200 militants killed instead reveals the gulf between the military’s public account and its soldiers’ testimony. Palestinians shot inside the corridor became terrorists on paper, their deaths repackaged as military success.

The Der Spiegel reservist described the same practice inside his brigade, which he said killed between 160 and 170 people over roughly 80 days during which there had been no fighting or Hamas attacks. Only one of the dead was suspected of carrying a weapon, though no soldier had actually seen one. He had been holding an object at night about 500 metres north of the corridor and, according to the reservist, posed no immediate threat. His body was never examined, yet he was recorded as a terrorist along with everyone else the brigade had killed.

That figure may overlap with the military’s claim of more than 200 and cannot be added to it. The accounts converge on how the dead were classified. Palestinians were killed without being identified as combatants, then recorded as terrorists after death.

The Silence Breaks

Der Spiegel interviewed ten Israelis who had served inside Gaza, operated drones remotely or selected targets for airstrikes. Breaking the Silence helped the reporters contact some of them. Nine remained anonymous because they feared the consequences of identification, while most said they would refuse to serve in Gaza again. The magazine considered their accounts credible after cross-checking them against other testimony and independently verifiable information.

Yuval Green, the only interviewee who spoke under his own name, served as a medic with the 55th Paratroopers Brigade for 51 days in Khan Younis before refusing further deployment. He described refusing an order to burn a Palestinian house after his commander failed to provide a convincing military justification. His account joins the wider body of soldier testimony describing unarmed Palestinians being killed, homes destroyed without military necessity and civilian deaths recorded as militant casualties. Breaking the Silence documented a similar practice along Gaza’s border perimeter. An Armoured Corps captain serving in southern Gaza described soldiers drawing a line beyond which everyone became a suspect, while admitting he did not know whether Palestinians knew where it was.

DOCUMENT: The Perimeter (2025) documents live-fire enforcement of boundaries Palestinians may not have known existed.(Source: breakingthesilence.org)
Perimeter_English-2

The same practices surfaced across units and military roles, extending beyond the conduct of any one soldier. Soldiers speaking at different times described hidden posts, unmarked boundaries, shoot-to-kill orders and the automatic conversion of the dead into terrorists. Some admitted participating. Others stood guard while it happened. Their decision to speak does not erase what they did, but it has broken through the military language that concealed it.

A civilian does not become a combatant by approaching a house, crossing an unmarked boundary or trying to reach someone bleeding in the road. International humanitarian law protects civilians unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. Deliberately targeting civilians for crossing such a boundary, or civilian rescuers for coming to the aid of the wounded, constitutes a war crime.

Almenat Kash (Straw Widow) concealed Israeli soldiers inside Palestinian homes, while the invisible boundaries drawn around their positions turned the surrounding streets into kill zones. Palestinians who had no warning of either were shot, then entered into military records as terrorists.

Those reports turned the killing of civilians into a record of military achievement. People passing through their own neighbourhoods became enemy fighters on paper, their deaths presented as proof of success by the army that had killed them. Calling them terrorists afterwards could not make the killings lawful. It served to conceal the crime.

READ MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE PALESTINE FILES

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Freddie Ponton

For four years, Europe presented its energy break with Russia as a strategic and moral necessity, with Brussels expanding sanctions, promising to cut Moscow’s revenues and preparing a complete ban on Russian liquefied natural gas. Yet European companies bought more LNG from Russia’s Yamal project in the first nine months of 2026 than in the same period of 2025.

EU ports received a record 12.18 million tonnes of Yamal LNG between January and September 2026, an increase of 9.5% over the same period in 2025. The gas arrived in 167 cargoes, roughly one every 1.6 days. The EU received 85% of Yamal’s recorded deliveries by volume even as the project’s worldwide shipments fell by 1.3%.

Urgewald, a German environmental and human rights organisation, placed the estimated benchmark value of those deliveries at €7.88 billion, using cargo volumes and monthly European TTF gas prices rather than disclosed contract payments. European leaders spoke of economic separation while EU ports remained the destination for a multibillion-euro Russian LNG trade.

Sanctions that preserved trade

The EU’s ban on Russian LNG under existing short-term contracts took effect on 25 April 2026. Eligible long-term agreements signed before 17 June 2025 could continue supplying Europe through the end of 2026, with the prohibition taking effect on 1 January 2027. Brussels could announce the coming break while established contracts kept Russian cargoes moving.

Five months after the ban on imports under eligible short-term LNG contracts took effect, EU ports received 792,440 tonnes of Yamal LNG in September, slightly more than a year earlier.

Yamal sold most of its output under long-term contracts signed before the war. TotalEnergies agreed to buy 4 million tonnes a year directly from the project, CNPC contracted 3 million, Germany’s SEFE inherited a 2.9 million tonne agreement, and Spain’s Naturgy held another for 2.5 million tonnes. Novatek sold part of its own allocation through separate agreements with TotalEnergies, Shell and Gunvor, now known as Centalion Group Ltd, These contracts kept major European energy companies commercially tied to Yamal after the political rupture with Moscow, securing supplies that could be sold or traded through their international portfolios, with destination flexibility varying by agreement.

TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanné confirmed that its Yamal agreements were linked to Brent crude. During periods of extreme volatility, those long-term contracts secured supplies that could cost less than replacement gas on the European spot market. When spot prices outpaced oil-linked purchase prices, the gap created an opportunity to earn more from selling the contracted cargoes.

Buyers could exploit that opportunity through global portfolios spanning ships, terminals, storage facilities and supplies from several producing countries. They could exchange cargoes, redirect available gas and meet customer obligations from alternative sources, freeing supplies for sale in markets offering stronger returns.

Russian officials acknowledged that portfolio buyers could swap Yamal supplies against gas from other sources and direct available cargoes towards the most lucrative markets. A Yamal cargo could fulfil one obligation while freeing another supply for sale elsewhere, allowing traders to earn from price differences across markets.

The contracts that bound companies to Russian suppliers also secured access to gas that could cost less than replacement cargoes bought at crisis prices. Keeping those agreements meant preserving both the supply and the trading opportunities it created.

The profits behind the policy

TotalEnergies owns 20% of Yamal LNG and holds 19.4% of Novatek, the project’s controlling shareholder. It also buys and markets Yamal cargoes, giving it commercial interests as both a shareholder and a cargo trader.

In July 2026, chief executive Patrick Pouyanné told analysts that lifting and selling Yamal cargoes generated an average of about $400 million annually. TotalEnergies had direct access to the cash booked through its UK trading entity. The income fluctuated with Brent crude prices because the contracts were linked to oil.

TotalEnergies also retained rights to dividends through its ownership positions, although sanctions limited its ability to transfer those funds from Russia to Europe. Pouyanné confirmed that some cash flows had been distributed without disclosing how much had been repatriated, while the company’s Novatek dividends, which he had valued at around $600 million annually in 2024, had previously remained stuck abroad.

The commercial incentive extended beyond the immediate Yamal income, as continued deliveries preserved access to contracted gas while removing Russian LNG before replacement supplies became available could drive prices higher across the wider market. Pouyanné warned at a French Senate hearing that replacing those supplies would force Europe to pay more, and told analysts in April 2024 that sanctions on Yamal would benefit TotalEnergies’ global portfolio by pushing LNG prices higher.

TotalEnergies had commercial interests under either outcome, as continued Yamal trade generated sales income while a sudden prohibition could tighten supply and raise the value of gas sold elsewhere in its portfolio. Continued access and greater scarcity offered different routes to income, leaving the company with a potential financial benefit even if Russian deliveries stopped.

A French Senate inquiry called in 2024 for France to lead efforts to sanction Russian LNG and end its own imports as soon as possible, yet two years later TotalEnergies was still earning about $400 million annually from Yamal sales.

Germany’s retained Russian contract

Germany’s state-owned energy group SEFE inherited a contract for about 2.9 million tonnes of Yamal LNG annually through the former Gazprom Marketing & Trading business, after Berlin nationalised its parent company, Gazprom Germania, in 2022. The group became Securing Energy for Europe, retaining the Russian supply agreement under German state ownership.

SEFE’s trading operation later attributed substantial profits across its LNG portfolio to contractual flexibility, freight optimisation and arbitrage, while its 2024 financial report recorded £411.2 million in EBITDA and £199.4 million in profit after tax. Those figures covered SEFE Marketing & Trading and its subsidiaries, without isolating the contribution from Yamal.

That flexibility extended to its Indian supply obligations, for which Reuters reported that the business had arranged cargoes from other sources to reduce freight costs. SEFE’s chief executive also explained that it could retain Yamal supplies in Europe and serve India from elsewhere in its portfolio when doing so was cheaper, although that account described an available trading option rather than documenting individual cargo swaps.

Under German state ownership, SEFE retained a long-term agreement for about 2.9 million tonnes of Yamal LNG annually, even as Europe sought to reduce its dependence on Russian energy. Berlin’s nationalisation changed the ownership of Gazprom’s former German business, but the Russian supply agreement remained in place, preserving its commercial ties to Yamal inside a state-owned international trader.

Shell’s phased withdrawal

On 8 March 2022, Shell announced a phased withdrawal from Russian hydrocarbons, including oil, gas and LNG, but later acknowledged that long-term contractual commitments remained despite the end of its spot purchases of Russian LNG.

Among those commitments was a 2015 agreement with Novatek for approximately 900,000 tonnes of Yamal LNG annually, with a term exceeding 20 years. In February 2023, a Shell spokesperson confirmed that the company was still receiving Russian LNG cargoes under that contract, almost a year after announcing its withdrawal.

Shell’s Yamal agreement sat within a global LNG portfolio, with its cargoes passing through a contractual transhipment point at Montoir-de-Bretagne in France. Across the wider business, Shell used its international operations to capture differences in regional demand and prices, and chief executive Wael Sawan attributed strong late-2023 trading results to arbitrage between eastern and western markets. Those results demonstrate the commercial value of portfolio flexibility, without identifying how much came from Yamal.

Naturgy and former Gunvor also retained access to Yamal supplies through long-term agreements, with Naturgy contracted for 2.5 million tonnes annually and Centalion Group Ltd,  for about 500,000 tonnes through Novatek. Reporting on Yamal’s portfolio buyers describes how companies could exchange those supplies with gas sourced elsewhere and direct cargoes towards more lucrative markets.

The contracts therefore carried commercial opportunities alongside their obligations, preserving access to gas that could be sold or exchanged within wider portfolios. Remaining in the trade could generate value even where companies presented their continuing purchases as a contractual constraint, although that potential should not be confused with a verified profit from each agreement.

Russian gas beyond Nord Stream

On 7 February 2022, then US President Joe Biden stood beside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said that a Russian invasion would bring Nord Stream 2 to an end. Asked how Washington could achieve that when Germany controlled the project, he maintained that the United States could ensure the outcome without explaining the mechanism.

Germany halted Nord Stream 2’s certification on 22 February 2022, preventing a pipeline that had never entered commercial service from beginning operations. Nord Stream 1 had already stopped delivering gas when explosions ruptured three of the system’s four pipeline strings on 26 September 2022, leaving only one Nord Stream 2 string intact. With the Nord Stream route out of operation, Russian LNG continued reaching European terminals through the contracts held by companies such as TotalEnergies, SEFE and Shell.

Yamal had begun exporting LNG in December 2017, almost five years before the Nord Stream explosions, and its seaborne supply network survived the loss of the pipelines. European companies continued buying Russian gas under long-term contracts, receiving by-sea supplies that remained commercially valuable even as the direct pipeline connection between Russia and Germany stood idle.

America captured the market

The decline of Russian pipeline supplies opened a larger European market for American LNG, and Washington worked with Brussels to expand the trade. In their 25 March 2022 agreement, the United States pledged to work towards at least 15 billion cubic metres of additional LNG for the EU that year, including supplies from international partners, while maintaining a regulatory environment that would support additional export capacity. The European Commission committed to working with member states to secure demand for approximately 50 billion cubic metres of additional American LNG annually until at least 2030, giving the effort to reduce Russian dependence a long-term market for US supplies.

American deliveries to the EU rose from 22 billion cubic metres in 2021 to 56 billion in 2022, exceeding the initial expansion target. By the second quarter of 2026, the United States supplied 63.2% of EU LNG imports, with Russia second at 17.3%. Europe’s retreat from Russian pipeline gas had been accompanied by a US-European policy effort to expand American supply, while Russian LNG retained a substantial place in the same market.

Dependence became leverage

Europe’s reliance on American supplies extended beyond LNG, giving Washington leverage over another essential fuel when the Trump administration asked the EU to release 120 million barrels of emergency diesel over six months. Washington presented reserve releases as an alternative to restricting American diesel exports, a threat with considerable force because the United States supplied around half of the EU’s diesel imports in August 2026.

Washington was pressing Europe to release finished diesel that could reach consumers without further refining, while its own emergency contribution consisted of crude offered to companies under loan arrangements requiring repayment in oil with additional barrels. The US Department of Energy’s September solicitation explicitly built replenishment into those contracts, leaving Europe under pressure to draw on immediately usable fuel while American releases carried a contractual obligation to restore its crude reserves.

The pressure was followed by a G7 agreement on 2 October 2026 to coordinate the release of 100 million barrels over four months, with a substantial diesel release brought forward into the first 20 days. G7 leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to refrain from energy export restrictions against one another, placing continued access to supplies alongside the agreement to draw down emergency stocks.

Washington had helped build a larger European market for American energy as part of the effort to reduce dependence on Russia, then used the prospect of restricting diesel exports to press European governments to release their reserves. Europe’s reliance on an allied supplier had left it exposed to pressure over access to fuel, with emergency stocks becoming part of the negotiation over keeping those supplies flowing.

A credibility crisis

European leaders need to explain how their effort to cut Russia’s energy revenues can be reconciled with rising Yamal deliveries to EU ports and European traders earning income from the cargoes. TotalEnergies’ disclosure of about $400 million in annual income makes continued trade harder to present solely as an unwanted contractual obligation, when the same agreement also sustained a valuable business. Compliance with the sanctions timetable does not resolve the political contradiction; it shows how much commerce that timetable allowed to continue.

Brussels also committed to building long-term demand for American LNG, while Washington later demonstrated its willingness to use fuel exports as leverage over European governments.

Whose interests are being served when Europe distances itself from Russian pipeline supplies, remains a paying customer for Russian LNG and becomes more exposed to American pressure?

European leaders owe their citizens an explanation of why Russia remained an acceptable supplier for profitable LNG contracts while economic separation was presented as a strategic necessity. They must also explain whose interests were served by replacing that dependence with greater exposure to Washington.

READ MORE EUROPEAN NEWS AT: 21st CENTURY WIRE EUROPE FILES

SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL

Sunday Wire Radio Show Archives

LISTEN LIVE ON THIS PAGE – START TIMES:

5pm-8pm UK Time | 12pm-3pm EST (US) | 9am-12pm PST (US)

This week on the SUNDAY WIRE, host Patrick Henningsen returns this week with our regularly scheduled program. The Little Green Goblin in Kiev is now panicking after clashing with Trump over the new US-Russia “diesel deal”, with Trump publicly putting  Zelensky on notice. Meanwhile, everyone is guessing when the US and Israel will attack Iran again: will it be before, or after the US midterms? We give our prediction—based on the data. Also this week: the tattoo laden, self-styled ‘Secretary of War”, crusader Pete Hegseth, announced he is going to livestream the military execution of Nidal Hasan, a Muslim US soldier convicted in a mass shooting on US base in 2009. Is this a planned provocation by Trump and Israel to help trigger a WWIII “holy war”? Later in the Overdrive hour, we’re joined by teammates Bryan “Hesher”McClain, Adam “Ruckus” Clark, and Basil Valentine for deeper look into these and other breaking developments. All this and more…

SUPPORT OUR PLATFORM AND JOIN OUR 21WIRE COMMUNITY @21WIRE.TV

This month’s featured music artists: The Real Anthem Band, Joseph Arthur, Peyoti for President, Peter Conway & Red Rumble, and Phil Zimmerman

WATCH IT LIVE ON YOUTUBE, X, RUMBLE, FACEBOOK AND HERE:

.
Listen to latest available audio upload here:

Download latest episode here

NOTE: Our weekly show will be available in podcast recording after the LIVE program, here at 21WIRE and on all major podcasting platforms (see links below).

Sunday Wire Radio Show Archives