Gunvor pulls offer for Russia’s Lukoil as US brands firm ‘Kremlin puppet’

Swiss-based trading house Gunvor on Thursday said it was withdrawing its offer to buy the international assets of Russia’s largest private oil firm after the U.S. said it would “never” approve the deal.

“President [Donald] Trump has been clear that the war must end immediately,” the U.S. Treasury Department’s official X account wrote on X. “As long as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin’s puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operate and profit.”

“The Treasury Department statement is fundamentally misinformed and false,” Gunvor’s company spokesperson Seth Pietras, told POLITICO. “In the meantime, Gunvor withdraws its proposal for Lukoil’s international assets.”

The excoriating comments come after Lukoil last week said it had accepted an offer by the multinational trading house to buy its international business after Trump announced sanctions against the energy company. Lukoil said the U.S. Treasury must approve the deal, before it is formally blacklisted on Nov. 21.

In Europe, Lukoil holdings include two refineries in Bulgaria and Romania, a 45 percent stake in a Dutch fuel processing facility and around 2,000 petrol stations.

Gunvor was co-founded by Swedish billionaire Torbjörn Törnqvist and Gennady Timchenko, one of Putin’s closest allies, in 2000 — and was once the biggest exporter of Moscow’s oil globally.

In 2014, days before the U.S. imposed sanctions on Gunvor’s former co-owner following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Timchenko sold his 43.6 percent stake in the trading house. 

Since then, the trading house has distanced itself from Russia.

“Gunvor is and has always been open and transparent about its ownership and business, and has for more than a decade actively distanced itself from Russian trading, selling off its Russian assets, and has publicly condemned the war in Ukraine,” Pietras said.

“We welcome the opportunity to ensure this clear misunderstanding is corrected.”