The war of words between BP and its Russian partners reached a crescendo today as Mikhail Fridman accused the UK oil giant's chairman, Peter Sutherland, of using Nazi tactics and "Goebbels propaganda".

Mr Fridman's extraordinary outburst represents a sharp escalation in the campaign mounted by the Alfa Access Renova (AAR) consortium to gain the upper hand in negotiations over the future ownership of the TNK-BP joint venture.

The Russian oligarch's likening of the BP boss to the notorious Nazi propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels, emerged in an interview published in Vedemosti, the Russian newspaper.

Mr Fridman was responding to comments last week from Mr Sutherland who likened the Russian partners' behaviour to that of corporate raiders.

The BP chairman suggested that the tactics adopted by the AAR consortium were a return to the 1990s, a lawless period when many of Russia's biggest fortunes were amassed by a small group of individuals, often referred to as oligarchs.

Mr Sutherland also pointed a finger at the Kremlin and asked why the Russian government had not acted to protect TNK-BP.

In response, Mr Fridman today accused BP of violating Russian law and preventing TNK-BP's expansion overseas, notably into Venezuela and Cuba.

The Russian TNK-BP shareholders suggested that BP's relationship with the US government was hindering TNK-BP's ability to expand internationally into countries that were anti-American but friendly to Moscow.

"We respect the governments of Britain and the United States of course but we believe TNK-BP is a Russian company and should be governed by the interests of its shareholders and Russian economic interests as a whole,” he said.

Mr Fridman is one of three tycoons, including Len Blavatnik and Viktor Vekselberg, that control the AAR consortium that owns half of the TNK-BP joint venture.

In a separate interview in Kommersant, another Russian newspaper, Mr Vekselberg describes the argument between the partners as tantamount to a war: "There is a conflict going on ... There are basically military actions going on here. What’s happening is a madhouse."

Refuting Mr Sutherland's suggestion that the AAR partner's behaviour was unethical, Mr Fridman said that the Russian partners had the "moral support" of the Russian government.

He repeated his threat to launch legal actions against BP in the International Court of Arbitration, seeking to prevent BP from seconding its staff to work in TNK-BP and to appoint independent directors to replace nominated BP directors.

The exchange of insults reflects the intensity of the row over control of a valuable asset that produces about 1.5 million barrrels per day of Siberian crude oil.

According to Russian reports, the AAR partners offered to swap their half share in the venture for a 7.5 per cent share stake in BP, worth more than £8 billion.

Underlying the internal struggle is the widespread understanding that the Kremlin wants to secure control of the asset via a state-controlled entity such as Gazprom or Rosneft.

Over the past six months, TNK-BP has suffered a campaign of harassment involving denials of visas, regulatory enquiries and allegations of corporate espionage, culminating in the AAR campaign to unseat Robert Dudley, the BP-nominated chief executive of TNK-BP.

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