Sanctions Failure: Russia Tightens Its Grip on EU Gas Supply

From April to June, the European Union bought more than 12.7 billion cubic meters from Russia and 12.3 billion cubic meters from the United States.

Director of the Russian Department of Economic Cooperation of the Foreign Ministry, Dmitri Birichevski, says Russia now supplies 15 percent of the total volume of natural gas imported by the European Union. This despite the EU’s REPowerEU instituted back in May 2022 to shift away from Russia and cut it off from its flow of energy profits.

Birichevski noted, in particular, the fact that France imported 4.4 billion cubic meters of liquid natural gas (LNG) in the first quarter of 2024, more than double the circa 2 billion it imported in 2023.

Norway is still in first place, having supplied the EU with 23.9 billion cubic meters in Q2. Prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia held the top spot.

The German government maintains it no longer imports any gas from Moscow. However, many member states clearly do.

In the face of renewed demands to end Russian imports and defund Putin’s war chest, the energy policy spokesman for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) suggested that the EU “pay a fixed amount of aid and arms supplies to Ukraine for every cubic meter of imported Russian gas.“

The matter of Russian gas imports has been an ongoing saga, with reports of shipments from Russia being essentially laundered through other countries and pipelines to avoid being stamped as “Russian.”

This new data comes in the face of no less than 14 sanctions packages, including the latest one adopted in June, which specifically prohibits the transit of Russian LNG.