MOSCOW, Dec. 26 — Inside the Kremlin last week, the executives of three major international companies — Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi and Mitsui — heaped praise on the man whose government had effectively forced them to cede control of the world’s largest combined oil and natural gas project.
 | | President Vladimir V. Putin meeting with leaders of Mitsubishi, Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsui on an oil and gas deal. |
“Thank you very much for your support,” Shell’s chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, told President Vladimir V. Putin during a meeting that ended a six-month regulatory assault on the project, Sakhalin II, but only after the companies surrendered control of it to the state energy giant, Gazprom. “This was a historic occasion.”
It was also a telling one, with lessons that extend beyond energy policy to such disparate matters as the killings of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. agent in London, and Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent journalist. |