CONSTANCE WIEMOLD

🇷🇺 🇺🇲 SCOOP: A company called Polar LNG presents itself as the "America's Arctic Advantage" project, flag and eagle on its homepage, pitching a plan to buy Russian technology and ship Alaskan gas to Asia. The NYT reports the company's start-up funding, routed through a UAE shell, actually traces back to Novatek, the sanctioned Russian energy giant that was also supposed to supply the equipment. The CEO who ran Polar LNG until September, Joel Riddle, says he was misled about where the money came from. The mechanism matters as much as the deception. Novatek wasn't just quietly bankrolling an American company, per texts Riddle shared with the Times, its deputy chairman discussed wiring up to $15 million directly to Polar LNG's parent, Tech Wave, with the first $5 million expected within days of an August meeting in Abu Dhabi. Two of Tech Wave's own executives previously worked at Novatek running LNG projects. Novatek itself confirmed to the Times it's moving to take a "minority shareholder" position in the project, meaning the same sanctioned Russian company would supply the technology, finance the venture, and own a stake in American gas production simultaneously. This isn't happening in a policy vacuum. Putin personally discussed Alaska LNG with Witkoff and Kushner last month, one thread in a broader set of energy talks that includes the Lukoil sale we covered days ago, also involving Gulf investors with ties to Witkoff and Kushner's business circles. Recently passed sanctions legislation, the Graham Act, specifically names Novatek and its Arctic LNG 2 project. Trump waived the law's Russia provisions last week, framed as necessary to keep peace talks alive. Whether or not that waiver was built with Polar LNG specifically in mind, it removes the exact legal obstacle this deal would otherwise face. Three senior Polar LNG executives have now resigned within weeks of each other, after raising sanctions concerns with the Energy Department. The company's response was to call Riddle a "disgruntled former employee" and claim he was terminated for cause, even though internal documents show he resigned six days before any termination letter arrived. A Baker Botts legal memo attached to his resignation already flagged that Treasury's own sanctions enforcement unit had raised concerns about Polar LNG's Novatek ties before any of this became public. Geoffrey Pyatt, a former Biden State Department energy official, put the stakes plainly: bringing Novatek into Arctic Alaska is bad on environmental, economic and geopolitical grounds, and "feeds the belief that Putin can get an out-of-jail-free card." Ilya Zaslavskiy goes further, calling any Novatek technology transfer a Kremlin attempt to use US energy policy to undermine US policy toward Ukraine. The Times found no evidence Witkoff or Kushner knew about the Novatek financing specifically, only that Alaska LNG came up in broad terms during their talks with Putin. What the reporting does establish is that a Russian sanctioned company spent months quietly building financial control over an American energy project marketed as a patriotic win, while the administration simultaneously removed the sanctions tool that would have stopped it.