Reuters: Russia to halt Kazakh crude transit to Germany's PCK refinery via Druzhba from May 1, risking Berlin-Brandenburg fuel shock

Analysis
Per a single Reuters exclusive (supply-schedule documents not published), 43,000 bpd is modest in the Druzhba context but concentrated enough at PCK to create a single-point-of-failure, with Rosneft's residual ownership claim constraining Germany's emergency-requisitioning options. The volume sits at the margin of what German logistics can absorb without diesel price spikes, politically combustible ahead of fall 2026 Brandenburg state elections. Astana will likely reroute via CPC or rail to Gdansk within 60 days, but that bridging interval is where the price pressure builds. Kazakh crude has shifted from a quiet 2023 stabilizing workaround into a confirmed Russian pressure tool. Peskov's non-denial is textbook plausible-deniability phrasing; the directive to Transneft is almost certainly confirmed by end of this week. The halt may instead be a negotiating posture aimed at extracting concessions on the 20th sanctions package maritime-services ban, with supply resuming by mid-May, but updated supply schedules delivered to both Astana and Berlin argues against it being purely positional.