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By Marwa Rashad, Kate Abnett and Nerijus Adomaitis
(Reuters) -European nations, including France, are among the staunchest supporters of Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Several have also stepped up their imports of Russian energy which pump billions of euros into Moscow's wartime economy.
Well into the fourth year of Russia's war against Ukraine, the European Union remains in the precarious position of financing both sides in the conflict. Its large deliveries of military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv are countered by commercial payments to Moscow for oil and gas.
The bloc has reduced its reliance on once-dominant supplier Russia by roughly 90% since 2022. It nonetheless imported more than 11 billion euros of Russian energy in the first eight months of this year, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an independent research organization based in Helsinki.
Seven of the EU's 27 member countries increased the value of their imports versus a year earlier, including five countries that support Ukraine in the war. France, for example, saw purchases of Russian energy rise 40% to 2.2 billion euros while the Netherlands jumped 72% to 498 million euros, the analysis shows.
While LNG ports in countries like France and Spain serve as entry points for Russian supplies into Europe, the gas is often not consumed in those countries but instead sent onwards to buyers across the bloc.
Vaibhav Raghunandan, EU-Russia specialist at CREA, described increased flows as "a form of self-sabotage" by some countries, given energy sales are the biggest source of revenue for Russia as it wages war against an European-backed Ukraine.
"The Kremlin is quite literally getting funding to continue to deploy their armed forces in Ukraine," he said.
TRUMP SLAMMED EUROPE'S LEADERS
EU energy payments to Moscow have come under renewed scrutiny after U.S. President Donald Trump dressed down European leaders in his speech to the U.N General Assembly last month, demanding they cease all such purchases immediately.
"Europe has to step it up," Trump said. "They can't be doing what they're doing. They're buying oil and gas from Russia while they're fighting Russia. It's embarrassing to them, and it was very embarrassing to them when I found out about it."
The French energy ministry told Reuters that France's value of Russian energy imports rose this year as it served customers in other countries, without naming countries or companies. Gas market data suggest part of France's Russian imports are sent onwards to Germany, according to Kpler analysts.
The Dutch government said while it supported EU plans to phase out Russian energy, until these proposals are fixed into EU law, it was powerless to block existing contracts between European energy companies and Russian suppliers.
The EU, which has already barred most purchases of Russian crude oil and fuel, has announced plans to speed up a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to 2027, from 2028. LNG now represents the biggest EU import of Russian energy, accounting for almost half the value of total purchases, the data shows.
The European Commission declined to comment on the 2025 imports data. The bloc's energy chief said last month the phased retreat from Russian fossil fuels was designed to ensure member countries don't face energy price spikes or supply shortages.
The proposals, which envisage a total ban on all Russian oil and gas from 2028, mean European cash could be supporting the Kremlin's war effort for a year or more to come.
Trump says U.S. oil and gas could replace lost Russian supplies, and many analysts say such a switch is possible, though it would boost Europe's dependency on U.S. energy in an era when Washington is using tariffs as a policy tool.
"The EU has agreed to buy more energy from the U.S to accommodate the very strong U.S. demands to stop Russian imports," said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. "However, it is an illusion to think that U.S. LNG would replace Russian LNG on a one-to-one basis. U.S. LNG is in the hands of private companies, which do not obey orders from the White House and the European Commission, they optimize their portfolios."
HUNGARY, BELGIUM AND OTHERS SEE BILLS RISE
The EU has come a long way since 2021.
In that year, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the bloc imported more than 133 billion euros of Russian energy, according to CREA data.
In January-August this year, the EU's bill amounted to 11.4 billion euros - a fraction of per-war levels and a decline of 21% from the same period of 2024, the figures show.
Hungary and Slovakia - which maintain close ties with the Kremlin and reject any notion of renouncing Russian gas - remain major importers, together accounting for 5 billion euros of that total. They wouldn't be affected by the planned EU sanctions on LNG, which requires the unanimous backing of member states, as they could still receive Russian pipeline gas until 2028.
Hungary was among the seven countries to see the value of Russian energy imports rise this year, by 11%, according to the data. France and the Netherlands are joined by four other countries whose governments support Ukraine in the war: Belgium, which saw a 3% increase, Croatia (55%), Romania (57%) and Portugal (167%).
Belgium's energy ministry said the country's increase was down to separate EU sanctions that took effect in March and banned "transshipments", or re-exporting, of Russian LNG to outside the bloc, meaning arriving LNG had to be unloaded in Belgium - a global hub - rather than being transferred from ship to ship to be transported onwards to a final destination.
Portugal's energy ministry said the country only imported modest amounts of Russian gas and that flows over the course of the year would be lower than 2024. The Croatian and Romanian governments didn't respond to requests for comment on the data.
The European Union's total imports of Russian energy since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, have amounted to more than 213 billion euros, the CREA data shows.
That dwarfs the amount the EU has spent on aid to Ukraine in the same period, even though it has been the country's biggest benefactor: the bloc has allocated 167 billion euros of financial, military and humanitarian assistance to Kyiv, according to the Kiel Institute, a German economic think-tank.
ENERGY FIRMS STICK TO LONG-TERM CONTRACTS
France's TotalEnergies is among the biggest importers of Russian LNG into Europe, with other major players including Shell, Spain's Naturgy, Germany's SEFE, and trading house Gunvor. They all operate long-term contracts that last into the 2030s or 2040s.
TotalEnergies told Reuters it was continuing deliveries from Russia's Yamal plant under contracts that could not be suspended without official EU sanctions in place. The company will maintain supplies as long as European governments deem Russian gas necessary for energy security, it added.
Shell, Naturgy and Gunvor declined to comment on Russian imports.
Ronald Pinto, gas research principal analyst at Kpler said companies were reluctant to risk incurring fines from breaching contractual commitments without the solid legal cover of an EU ban on Russian LNG.
"In the end, market players are buying this LNG, not countries, and for the most part, they are sticking to their long-term contracts," he added.
Pinto said flow dynamics studies suggested French imports of Russian LNG often flowed via pipeline to Belgium to then reach Germany, where there's strong demand from industrial users. He cautioned it was "impossible to track exactly the movement of gas molecules within the European gas grid".
A spokesperson for SEFE, which operates 10% of Germany's gas transmission network, confirmed that the company imports Russian gas via France and Belgium.
The German economy ministry told Reuters that it welcomed EU efforts to phase out imports of Russian fossil fuels, but that SEFE was bound by a long-standing contract to buy LNG from Russia's Yamal plant with no option to terminate the agreement.
"Under the contract's take-or-pay terms, SEFE would have to pay for the agreed quantities, even if no delivery was taken," a ministry spokesperson said. "Non-acceptance would enable Yamal to resell these quantities, which would then provide double support to the Russian economy."
(Reporting by Marwa Rashad in London, Kate Abnett in Brussels and Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo; Additional reporting by America Hernandez in Paris, Francesca Landini in Milan, Christoph Steitz and Vera Eckert in Frankfurt, Shadia Nasralla in London, Pietro Lombardi in Madrid and Andrey Khalip in Lisbon; Editing by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Pravin Char)
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