The EU has given €35bn (£29.1bn) to Vladimir Putin for energy supplies since the start of his war and €1bn to fund Ukraine’s defence, the union’s top diplomat said.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, made the comparison in a characteristically blunt speech to the European parliament as he urged Europe to send more arms to Ukraine to help end the war.
“We have to continue arming Ukraine. We need less rounds of applause and more assistance,” he said. The EU had pledged €1bn in military aid for Ukraine, he said, which “might seem a lot” but “€1bn is what we pay Putin every day for the energy he provides us. Since the beginning of the war we have given him €35bn. Compare that to the €1bn we have given to Ukraine in arms and weapons.”
He made the comments as the EU debated a fifth round of sanctions against Russia, with a ban on coal imports worth €4bn from the country expected to be announced soon.
EU work on sanctions intensified as officials reacted to reports from Bucha and other Ukrainian towns where civilians have been murdered, tortured, raped and abused.
Poland and the Baltic states argue that the energy ban should also target Russia’s far more lucrative oil and gas exports, but have faced resistance to immediate action from Germany, Austria and Hungary. The EU imports 41% of its gas and 27% of its oil from Russia, but these figures are much higher in some member states.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who is expected to travel to Kyiv with Borrell in the coming days, promised the latest sanctions would not be the last. “Now we have to look into oil and we will have to look into the revenues that Russia gets from fossil fuels.” EU officials, she told MEPs, would study an Estonian idea under which payments for Russian gas would be put in an escrow account, ie in the hands of a third party, with the aim of limiting revenues to the Russian state that could fund the war effort.
Europe’s energy autonomy hinged on renewable energy, Borrell said, as he lamented the fact the EU had become dependent on fossil fuels from repressive regimes around its borders.
