Russia’s brutal, illegal war on Ukraine is lumbering into its fourth year, yet Europe still hasn’t used all its leverage against Moscow. Despite far-reaching cutbacks that have transformed global energy markets—and the European Union’s pledge to terminate all energy deals with Russia by 2027—the continent still maintains multifarious links to the Russian energy sector. Several European countries have failed to completely sever their energy ties to Russia, and the notoriously pro-Russian governments of Hungary and Slovakia are among them—but they are not alone. In 2024, only Slovakia deposited more into Russian accounts for fossil fuels than France, followed by Hungary, Austria, and Spain.
A December report from the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) concluded, “Although Russian fossil fuel exports to the West have decreased, glaring loopholes in the sanctions’ regime persist.” Nowhere are the failings more prominent than with liquified natural gas (LNG). In 2024, the EU imported a record 16.5 million metric tons of LNG from Russia, surpassing the 15.2 million in 2023.
Russia’s brutal, illegal war on Ukraine is lumbering into its fourth year, yet Europe still hasn’t used all its leverage against Moscow. Despite far-reaching cutbacks that have transformed global energy markets—and the European Union’s pledge to terminate all energy deals with Russia by 2027—the continent still maintains multifarious links to the Russian energy sector. Several European countries have failed to completely sever their energy ties to Russia, and the notoriously pro-Russian governments of Hungary and Slovakia are among them—but they are not alone. In 2024, only Slovakia deposited more into Russian accounts for fossil fuels than France, followed by Hungary, Austria, and Spain.
A December report from the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) concluded, “Although Russian fossil fuel exports to the West have decreased, glaring loopholes in the sanctions’ regime persist.” Nowhere are the failings more prominent than with liquified natural gas (LNG). In 2024, the EU imported a record 16.5 million metric tons of LNG from Russia, surpassing the 15.2 million in 2023.
EU countries, led by Germany, have done much to truncate their Russian energy dependencies. Between early 2022 and the end of 2023, the EU slashed its imports of Russian fossil fuels by 94 percent, from $16 billion per month to around $1 billion per month, according to Belgian think tank Bruegel. Coal imports are nil. But countries across the bloc are still buying energy supplies from Russia and thus paying straight into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war chest.
When it comes to Russian LNG, which is not sanctioned and remains a bargain compared to imported U.S. super-chilled gas, Europe has even regressed. According to the Financial Times, EU countries’ imports from Russia—led by France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium—reached an all-time high in 2024.
Russian gas imports are Europe’s most glaring failure, with Russia still making up 18 percent of all EU natural gas imports as of late 2024. In 2022, it was Russia—not the Europeans—that scaled back gas imports. It was, namely, to penalize Europe for its refusal to pay in rubles, which caused exports to the EU to fall by over half over the course of that year. By 2024, the share of Russia’s pipeline gas in EU imports dropped to about 8% of its 2021 total as Germany and other countries found new markets. But Russian gas continued to flow into the EU—through Ukrainian pipelines—with some of the best customers being Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Greece, and Italy.
But the Russia-Ukraine pipeline contract ends on Jan. 1, 2025, and Kyiv is adamant that the gravy train will stop: No more Russian fuel will travel through Ukraine. Despite Ukraine’s warnings, manufacturers in Austria, Italy, Slovakia, and Hungary protested vigorously—and futilely—to the European Commission in December, claiming that Ukraine’s decision not to renew the contract threatened supply security.
In fact, neither Budapest nor Bratislava will keel as a result of the higher prices they’ll have to pay elsewhere. They can access Russian gas from the TurkStream pipeline that runs under the Black Sea to Turkey and then passes through Bulgaria and Serbia. Politico reported that behind Slovakia’s protestations are its handsome earnings from the “reselling and transit of Russian gas” through Ukraine—around $1.5 billion a year. Balkan Insight found that Hungary’s interests are also pecuniary: Gazprom sells Hungary even more gas so that traders in Hungary can profit from the resale to third countries, “and the government collects a large chunk of the money in taxes.”
Moldova, however, relies heavily on Russian imports and will suffer in more ways than one. Chisinau is so worried that the cutoff will destabilize the government that it declared a 60-day state of emergency on Dec. 13. With crucial parliamentary elections happening in 2025, Moldovan authorities are worried that a severe energy crisis would make it even more vulnerable to Russian subterfuge. “Russia is playing its last card to ensure that Moldova’s pro-European course fails,” opined Deutsche Welle’s Vitalie Calugareanu. “The goal is to compromise the pro-European government in the run-up to the elections, including the all-decisive parliamentary elections in 2025.” After all, a referendum on EU membership passed in 2024 by the narrowest of margins; the race’s closeness was a direct result of heavy-handed Russian intervention. The last thing that Moldova needs is another reason for its ethnically mixed population to be nostalgic for Russian or Soviet rule.
Perhaps Chisinau should consider the silver lining: The cutoff would sever the country definitively from Russian energy sources—and its bullying. Moreover, it would paralyze and perhaps even sink its breakaway sliver of territory, located between the Dniester River and the Moldova–Ukraine border, called Transnistria. For three decades, the pro-Russian enclave’s black marketeers have profited handsomely from Russian gas, which it receives at a discount—in return for loyalty. (Transnistria is the host of 1,500 Russian troops, a “peacekeeping” force that figures into Moscow’s long-term Ukraine plans.)
Geopolitically, the end of the Transnistrian dictatorship would be a windfall for all of Europe and another slap for Putin. The flip side to this, though, is that Transnistria hosts Moldova’s single thermal power plant, which runs on Russian gas. In the absence of alternative European energy sources, the whole country would freeze—and the government’s pro-EU parties would pay a high price.
Nevertheless, just as the rest of Europe has shifted to other sources of natural gas, this cabal of Russian gas customers—even Moldova—can do the same, with a hand from the EU.
As for petroleum, the G-7 and EU embargos that went into effect in late 2022 and early 2023—in the form of a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil and a ban on direct imports—have taken tens of billions of dollars out of Moscow’s annual revenues. Yet Russian petroleum still manages to find its way into EU ports. Exemptions for landlocked states allow Russian crude to continue flowing into EU markets, particularly Hungary and Slovakia. On a lesser scale, Belgium, Austria, and the Czech Republic also take advantage of the exemptions to purchase Russian oil.
These exemptions are not the only means Russian fossil fuels enter the EU market. Oil products refined from Russian crude frequently reach EU shores through third countries. In the first three quarters of 2024, EU countries imported 12.3 million metric tons of oil products from India, China, and Turkey, with 4.8 million metric tons directly from Russian crude, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. According to the CSD report, “The EU’s imports of oil products from the three main Indian refineries running on Russian crude increased 58% in the first three quarters of 2024 compared to the same period last year, widening the EU’s refining loophole.”
Compounding this leakage is the world’s shadow fleet, a ragtag collection of aging tankers that carry Russian crude oil and LNG but fly under foreign flags. The EU’s 15th sanctions package, finalized on Dec. 16, bars 79 suspected non-EU ships from entering EU ports (the United Kingdom recently imposed similar bans on ships). Moreover, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Estonia, and the UK will now inspect the insurance certificates of oil tankers along the route used by the shadow fleet through the English Channel, the Danish Straits, and the Gulf of Finland. Moreover, G-7 countries are examining new measures, from a full ban on handling Russian crude to reducing the price cap on Russian oil to about $40 per barrel.
“Russia has been able to circumvent the restrictions to continue to earn billions of dollars from exporting oil, helping Putin finance the war,” said Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Baker said that fear of stoking inflation stopped the G-7 from getting tougher on Russian oil sooner and that allies could have sanctioned the shadow fleet more aggressively or lowered the price cap to drive down Russian revenues. Likewise, the United States could have threatened to impose sanctions on anyone involved in purchasing oil from blacklisted tankers. The latest sanctions, at least, are a step in the right direction, she said.
Russia is also still the dominant fuel and technology provider to much of Europe’s nuclear-power industry. It’s one of the world’s largest uranium producers and maintains control over 44 percent of the global uranium-enrichment capacity. Almost 20 percent of Europe’s imported raw uranium hails from Russia and another 23 percent is of Kazak origin, where Rosatom, a Russian nuclear energy corporation, pretty much runs the show. According to Bruegel, “The absence of sanctions can be explained by, first, the EU’s relative dependence on Russian nuclear fuel products, and second, the limited impact sanctions would have on Russia’s trade balance. In 2023, the EU imported around [$1 billion] worth of Russian nuclear-industry products.”
Nevertheless, the United States is now taking the lead in putting this trade to an end. Roughly 35 percent of U.S. nuclear fuel imports used to come from Russia. On Aug. 12, however, the United States began restricting imports of Russian uranium products and will fully prohibit them by Jan. 1, 2028. The EU’s new energy commissioner, Dan Joergensen, said the EU is also on the verge of sanctioning Russian nuclear imports, which the European Parliament has advocated for. With just a few weeks on the job, Joergensen talks tough: pledging to drive forward the severance of all EU energy ties to Russia.
Not to be outdone, Moscow responded in November by —and the EU can surely expect the same treatment. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary all rely exclusively on Russian nuclear fuel and technology (and Finland largely so) as a result of their . As for France, it “appears determined to maintain its nuclear relationship with Russia be it through the import of enriched uranium or numerous projects with Rosatom,” according to the 2024 World Nuclear Report.
Given the humanitarian tragedy in Ukraine and the war’s geopolitical ramifications, Europe should expedite the formulation of clear guidelines and earlier deadlines for phasing out all types of Russian energy imports.
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