Stop financing Putin’s war with energy imports, Ukrainian NGO pleads

(EurActiv, 3 Mar 2022) The European Union needs to stop all oil and gas imports from Russia to prevent indirectly funding Russia’s war in Ukraine, 25 NGOs, including the National Ecological Center of Ukraine, told the EU on Thursday (3 March).

“Russia continues to receive payments from European governments that inadvertently fund Russia’s assault on Ukraine. That must end,” said Heorhiy Veremiychyk of the Ukrainian NGO.

“Russian missiles and bombs are killing hundreds of Ukrainian defenders and civilians. This will only get worse. We need urgent action to cripple the Putin regime’s ability to fund the war,” he added.

The European Union imported an average of over 380 million cubic metres of pipeline gas per day from Russia in 2021 – around 140 billion cubic metres (bcm) for the year as a whole – according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

And Europe is still importing Russian oil, gas, and coal. Thanks to the skyrocketing prices, this means Europe is sending Moscow millions of euros per day even as its army moves through Ukraine.

“[Today] Europe will pay Russia €600 million for natural gas and €350 million for oil, i.e. around €1 billion in just one day,” Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the think tank Bruegel, wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

“Every day the EU sends €800 million to Russia to get oil and gas. As this is also used to fund the war, the EU might soon need to face this and act,” he warned a day earlier.

In this context, the 25 NGOs are demanding that the EU and UK introduce a tariff on Russian fossil fuel exports and then put an embargo on these.

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EurActiv, 3 Mar 2022: Stop financing Putin’s war with energy imports, Ukrainian NGO pleads

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