As the U.S. tries to make headway on a plan to end the war in Ukraine, European allies are moving to defend the country—and their continent—from Russia in the future.
Discussions indicate that a coalition of the willing could provide a “presence on the ground, in the air, and at sea, as well as air defense.” This support is not set in stone. Right now, however, there’s a way Europe can show it’s serious: intensify its economic sanctions against Russia.
The first step is putting an end to Russian shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which have been soaring. Last year, the European Union imported a record 16.5 million metric tons of LNG from Russia. Most of it was destined for one country: Germany.
Although Germany ostensibly bans imports of Russian LNG, its national energy company in 2024 bought 58 cargoes of gas through the French port at Dunkirk alone—a sixfold increase over the prior year. Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands are also major depots. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) reported on April 10 that EU fossil fuel imports from Russia in 2024 totaled $24 billion, a huge boon to Putin’s war effort.
Enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine
This reliance must stop. As Walter Russell Mead wrote in the Wall Street Journal shortly before the Oval Office debacle, European countries “have seized every opportunity to trade with Russia, even when that trade weakened European security and strengthened Moscow.”
A new report by CREA found that the EU spent more on oil and gas from Russia last year than it spent on financial aid to Ukraine. Vaibhav Raghunandan, coauthor of the report, said, “Purchasing Russian fossil fuels is, quite plainly, akin to sending financial aid to the Kremlin and enabling its invasion.” In 2024, oil and gas tax revenues paid for 30% of the Russian government’s budget, according to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Russia is the No. 2 exporter of LNG to Europe, but the United States is No. 1—and U.S. industry is prepared to pick up the slack when the Europeans finally decide to end their dependence on Russia. The Ukrainian private energy company DTEK last year signed a deal to buy LNG shipped from Louisiana by Venture Global. EU countries should follow this strategy.
At the end of 2024, Kyiv finally turned off Russia’s gas pipeline gas to Europe with the completion of a decades-old deal that allowed the transit of natural gas produced by Russian energy giant Gazprom through Ukraine. But pipeline gas continues to flow to parts of Europe through Turkey. That loophole needs addressing, too.
Another sanctions gap
Energy isn’t the only sanctions gap that Europe has to seal. An American Enterprise Institute report by Chris Miller and Caroline Nowak last year concluded that “Russian mineral and metal export volumes remain largely untouched.” Russia exports of cobalt, lead, titanium, platinum, and gold have all risen since the start of the war.
At a Hudson Institute panel discussion in February, Oleksandr Kalenkov, president of Ukraine’s trade association for metals, said that Europe is his industry’s home market, but “it is really painful to see that Russian products are still imported by the European Union.”
He pointed to EU exemptions for such Russian steel inputs as pig iron and iron ore and to “high quotas that haven’t hurt” Russian exporters of products like slabs that are used to make steel coils and plates. Kalenkov says that European countries are buying about $4 billion worth of Russian metal products a year.
Sanctions require a consensus of the EU’s 27 countries, and member states like Italy, Belgium, Denmark, and the Czech Republic host Russian factories, such as steel rolling plants, that use Russian metal inputs. “The Russians are taking hostage the employees of these plants,” says Kalenkov. “It’s a sad situation.”
And an utterly unnecessary one. Europeans can force the sale of those Russian plants or get metals from other countries, including Ukraine, which is doubly suffering. First, the Russians have destroyed many of their metal factories, including the 95-year-old Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol, one of the largest in Europe; second, the Russians are still selling into European markets with cheaper metals, squeezing out Ukrainian competitors.
Russia’s economic pain
Evidence is increasing that the Russian economy is faltering. Financial Times commentator Martin Sandbu wrote in January that “Russia’s war economy is a house of cards.” Hudson Institute’s Peter Rough and Thomas Duesterberg reported, “While the Kremlin’s own figures put countrywide inflation at 9%, interest rates in Russia tell a different story: 21% for private debt, with reports hinting at up to 25% soon.”
Russia also has a “chronic shortage of workers,” writes Olga Chyzh of the University of Toronto in the Guardian, “thanks to its ageing population and the exodus of some 700,000 working-age individuals at the start of the war.”
Europe can’t back Ukraine on the one hand and keep sending billions to Russia on the other. The time to end this absurdity is now.
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