Moscow rules

After the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union responded by cutting off imports of Russian coal and oil, and vowing to phase out imports of Russian natural gas. It was a major shift for the Continent, which had for decades pursued a policy of building trade ties with the Russian Federation—and the Soviet Union before it—in hopes of improving political ties.

Days after the invasion, Germany’s then-chancellor, Olaf Scholz, called the moment a Zeitenwende—a historic turning point—and pledged that his country would transform its economic and security policies to fit the new reality. Political and business leaders across the Continent echoed Scholz’s thinking, breaking off commerce with Moscow and advocating for stronger militaries. The EU soon imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow, and many member states significantly increased their defense spending.

But today, more than three years later, Europe still can’t get by without Russian natural gas. The Continent has dramatically reduced its total energy imports from Russia, but the EU still bought a record amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from it last year—and it’s on a pace to break that record again.

Last year, the EU sent almost €22 billion to Moscow for oil and gas. Since the beginning of the war, EU countries have sent more money to Russia for energy imports than they’ve sent to Ukraine in all military, financial, and humanitarian aid.

Why?

Nicholas Kumleben is the energy director at the consulting firm Greenmantle, where he leads research on energy, commodities, and climate change. Kumleben says Europe’s basic problem is that it relies on natural gas for a lot of its most important energy needs—and there just aren’t enough other suppliers on the global market right now. But the bigger problem is that the Continent spent generations building a dependent relationship with a hostile adversary—a strategy Kumleben calls Europe’s “biggest policy mistake since World War II.” The world’s other gas producers never had an incentive to develop their LNG exports, because European countries were busy building overland and undersea pipelines to bring in gas from Russia. Meanwhile, they could never stand up to Moscow’s many aggressions in recent decades—including Russia’s initial occupation of parts of Ukraine in 2014—on account of their dependence on Russian energy.

Now, the U.S. has plans to export enough LNG within the next few years that the Continent could stop buying gas from Russia—raising the question, Kumleben says, of what it might mean for Europe to replace dependence on Moscow with dependence on Washington …

Michael Bluhm: How has the war changed Europe’s energy supplies?