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What the Baltic Pipe opening signalled in September 2022
Summary
A look back at two reported developments from 26 and 27 September 2022: a new gas route to Poland and a public admission about the Wagner Group.
What was happening in the region's energy and security story on 28 September 2022? The previous two days had brought two separate reports, each worth reading on its own terms.
On 27 September 2022, leaders from Poland, Norway and Denmark held a ceremony to open the Baltic Pipe natural gas pipeline. The pipeline was built to carry natural gas from the Norwegian shelf via Denmark to Poland. That route is the substance of the announcement: a link joining a Norwegian supply source to a Polish destination through Danish territory.
On 26 September 2022, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and close ally of Vladimir Putin, publicly admitted for the first time that he had founded the Wagner Group. The group is a private military company accused of war crimes in places where it had been deployed. Prigozhin had previously denied any involvement with the organisation, so the statement reversed his earlier position.
The two reports concern different subjects, and the reported facts do not link them. Taken together, they show how the news of those days ran on two tracks: a new piece of cross-border energy infrastructure opened by three governments, and a public acknowledgement by a figure close to the Russian president of his role in a company facing war-crimes accusations.
