While Europe’s leaders boast about collapsing the Russian war economy, the bloc’s gas purchasers handed it nearly £5bn in six months
Europe has handed Vladimir Putin a €6bn (£5bn) boost this year after buying a record amount of gas from a key Siberian plant Credit: Getty Images Europe
Bill Browder
July 14, 2026
For the last few weeks, anyone who supports Ukraine has been able to enjoy a rare pleasure. Night after night, Ukrainian drones have set Russian oil refineries and tankers ablaze. Gas stations across Russia have run dry. Videos show fistfights breaking out in the queues. For a country that likes to present itself as an energy superpower, it is humiliating.
The damage is real. But we should be honest about where Vladimir Putin actually gets his money. It is not from gasoline sold at home. It is from crude oil and natural gas sold to foreign buyers. Last year those sales poured around £75bn into the Russian budget. That is the money that pays the soldiers, builds the missiles and keeps the war going.
So if we want to stop the war, this is the target. Cut off the oil and gas revenue and you cut off the war. It really is that simple.
This is where the West is supposed to come in. And, to listen to Brussels, we are doing exactly that.
Last month the European Union rolled out its latest round of sanctions against Russia. It went after the military-industrial complex, the banks and the so-called shadow fleet, the ageing tankers Putin uses to dodge the oil price cap. A twenty-first package is already being prepared. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, summed up the mood. “Brick by brick,” she said, “we are collapsing the foundations of Russia’s war economy.”
It sounds tough. It sounds serious. There is only one problem. We are talking out of both sides of our mouth.
This week the energy campaign group Urgewald published its analysis of Russian gas imports for the first half of this year. The findings are staggering. In just six months, the EU bought a record amount of Russian liquefied natural gas. The bill came to almost £5bn. That is an 18 per cent increase on the same period last year. Europe bought up almost the entire output of Russia’s flagship Yamal plant. The biggest buyers were France, Belgium and Spain.
These were not leftover cargoes with nowhere else to go. Shipments from Yamal to Asia collapsed by nearly three quarters over the same period. Europe did not stumble into this. Europe chose it.
Read that again. While European leaders boast about collapsing the Russian war economy brick by brick, European buyers were handing the Kremlin £5bn for its gas. And they were doing it in the very months Russia was raining missiles down on Ukrainian power stations, hospitals and homes.
Think about what that means. We are approving tens of billions of pounds in military and financial aid so that Ukraine can fight off the Russian army. At the very same time we are sending Russia billions of pounds that it uses to fund that same army. We arm the victim with one hand and pay the aggressor with the other. It is not a policy. It is a farce.
It is more shocking still when you look at how Russia treats us in return. Russian jets buzz our airspace. Russian drones cross into Poland and Romania. Russian vessels loiter over the cables that carry our internet and our power in the Baltic. An incendiary device planted on a cargo flight caught fire at a DHL depot in Birmingham. This is not the behaviour of a trading partner. It is the behaviour of an enemy. And we are paying that enemy for its gas.
There is no clever argument that makes this acceptable. For years we were told that Europe simply could not survive without Russian energy. That excuse has expired. Russian oil now makes up less than 3 per cent of EU imports. Russian gas has been falling for years. The volumes that remain are a choice, not a necessity. Some governments have decided that slightly cheaper gas is worth more than the lives being lost in Ukraine. They are wrong.
The defenders of the trade will point out that the EU has already agreed to ban Russian LNG. That is true. But the ban does not fully bite until 2027. In the meantime the buying goes on, at record levels, and every cargo is another cheque written to the Kremlin. A ban that arrives after you have handed over billions is not much of a ban.
If we are serious about defending ourselves and serious about supporting Ukraine, there is only one honest course. The United Kingdom, the European Union and every ally must go cold turkey on Russian oil and gas. Not in 2027. Now. Every barrel and every cargo we refuse to buy is money taken straight out of Putin’s war chest.
We cannot keep talking a good game and then doing the opposite. Ukrainians are dying to hold back an army that we are helping to pay for. The drones over the Russian refineries show what courage looks like. The least we can do is stop funding the other side.
Sir William Browder KCMG is an American-born British financier who formerly headed the largest foreign investment fund in Russia. In 2005 he was declared a threat to Russian national security and deported to the UK
“Think about what that means. We are approving tens of billions of pounds in military and financial aid so that Ukraine can fight off the Russian army. At the very same time we are sending Russia billions of pounds that it uses to fund that same army. We arm the victim with one hand and pay the aggressor with the other. It is not a policy. It is a farce.”
Just unbelievable.
“The United Kingdom, the European Union and every ally must go cold turkey on Russian oil and gas. Not in 2027. Now. Every barrel and every cargo we refuse to buy is money taken straight out of Putin’s war chest.”
Amen.
Comment from :
Peter Hirsch
Well done, Sir William. Can you expose the importers so action can be taken aginst them?
Betty Boop
Well said. Can’t argue with any of this
Adam Turner
The war has been a dreadfully bloody stalemate for well over three years and needs to end ASAP. Russia won’t withdraw, so the West needs more resolve and unity to tighten sanctions, and Ukraine needs more military support to get Russia’s frontline definitively on the defensive. Everyone in positions of influence, including Ukraine’ S former C-in-C and current UK ambassador Valerii Zaluzhnyi knows it is, in all likelihood, going to end in the territorial division of Ukraine. The sooner this happens, the more lives will be saved.
Despite Ukraine’s undoubtedly effective efforts, the strongest consensus is that Russian strikes have had the larger and more immediate destructive impact on Ukraine’s energy system, because they have repeatedly damaged generation, transmission, heating, and water services across broad areas and caused prolonged civilian hardship.
https://www.iea.org/reports/ukraines-energy-security-and-the-coming-winter/ukraines-energy-system-under-attack
Click to access 2026-06-29%20PR44.pdf
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166798
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-launches-massive-attack-ukraines-energy-system-zelenskiy-says-2026-02-07/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/30/how-severe-is-russias-energy-shortage-because-of-ukrainian-strikes
https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/quantifying-ukraines-strikes-russian-energy-infrastructure
https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2024-04-17/russias-new-large-scale-attacks-ukraines-energy-infrastructure
The first step to finding solutions is recognising the reality.
Peter Robertson
Ed Milliband – a Russian plant?
It’s too serious a matter to joke about, but Red Ed is a big problem.
It’s a far more serious proposition than DJT’s supposed links (or liabilities) to the Kremlin.
Thomas Glover
Reply to Peter Robertson
Certainly he seems to have the intellectual abilities of a plant. Not necessarily a Russian one, just a plant.
But, yes, it is too serious a matter to joke about. I just couldn’t help myself.
Thomas Glover
All very good points. But do try and keep some perspective. The article says that Europe has paid Russia £5 bn over 6 months. Which I agree is shameful. But the UK alone has a welfare bill of £27.8 bn a month. Every month.
Eyal Levy
Reply to Thomas Glover –
And how much damage and death were inflicted on Ukraine using that £5 bn? There is a warped connection between the welfare bill and British defenselessness. Its massive size reflects the fact that huge numbers of Britons are totally useless. They could be in the army or contributing otherwise to the British collective, but they don’t, because welfare has totally corrupted the basic values of work, responsibility and pulling your weight. As long as Ukraine keeps the Russians at bay and weakens them (because Ukrainians are the polar opposite of British rot), Britain is relatively safe, but in return paying to help kill those who are protecting her.
Hilary Deighton
France can’t be trusted, Spain is currently a Socialist basket case and Belgium has shown its utter absence of backbone in refusing to release Russian lucre to help Ukraine. We must be very grateful for Brexit. These countries should be subjected to relentless international shame for betraying their own words and stabbing Ukraine (which is defending them as well as herself) in the back. Ukraine’s current magnificent campaign of taking apart Russia’s energy capabilities may help focus the minds of these treacherous countries and inspire them to change to acceptable energy strategies.
Steve McClellan
I’m a massive fan of Bill Browder, having read his books, but I think he’s conflated the members who’ve made those buying decisions, and the companies within, with the EU. I wish the EU was powerful enough to stop such trade entirely but people often complain they’re a dictatorship and must be surprised when they can’t act fully in unison.
Pete Shoesmith
Typical EU.
James McColgan
Reply to Pete Shoesmith –
Before the war the EU was purchasing between 25% to 30% of its crude oil requirements from Russia. Sea borne oil imports from Russia were banned in late 2022 and then refined oil was banned in early 2023. Land locked countries got a partial exemption. As of today, oil imports from Russia (crude and refined) are significantly reduced. The reduction in gas imports is even more significant. The EU collectively was buying 40% of its needs from Russia. That is now down to around 15%. Gas imports have been switched to Qatar and the US. The main supplier is of course Norway. Some individual EU countries are still getting a large portion of their gas requirements from Russia. That’s why I say “collectively” the EU has drastically reduced its energy imports from Russia. Your remark of “typical EU” is completely wrong.
Steve Gooda
Mr Browder is right. Buying anything which enriches Russia and fuels her atrocities is simply wrong. Time for our so called leaders to show some leadership, cut off all trade with Russia and her proxies, starve her of funds and material, destroy her military machine, force hardship upon her people, fear upon her leadership and bring this war to an end.
This war has taught me that Europe is a place filled with dickless cowards, and infested with greedy, stupid, and lazy oxygen thieves who don’t give a shit one way or another if the russian scum comes a knocking on their doors.