To which country has the West given more financial assistance in the past three years: Ukraine or Russia? Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron should have had a simple rebuttal to Donald Trump’s claim on 21 February that they “didn’t do anything” to prevent Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago and that “nobody’s done anything” to end a war that has claimed more than 12,500 civilian lives. After all, Europe – not America – has been the largest provider of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The ugly truth, however, is that Europe has been still more generous to Russia.
Three years after Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Europe continues to spend billions of euros more on Russian oil and gas than it sends to Ukraine in aid, according to data collected by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The EU is the world’s largest market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and Russia remains its second-biggest supplier.
Mr Macron was applauded for declaring, in his press conference with Donald Trump on 24 February, that Russia is “the aggressor” in the conflict. Yet French homes and power stations are burning gas extracted in the Russian Arctic by a plant partly owned by France’s TotalEnergies.
In London, as the New Statesman has previously reported, shipbrokers and insurers have helped to create a “dark fleet” of around 600 vessels that carry crude oil – the main source of revenue to Vladimir Putin’s gangster state – from Russia’s Baltic ports to India and China. From there it is refined and returned to Europe as de-Russified diesel and apolitical aviation fuel. These ships can be seen from the beaches of Kent as they sail into the English Channel.
While Western governments have imposed restrictions on exports to Russia, Western businesses have now spent years exporting very high volumes of goods to Russia’s neighbours. Sky News has reported that British companies have dramatically increased exports of goods such as materials to make drones and aeronautical navigation equipment to Kyrgyzstan, Russia’s neighbour and ally. These exports rose by more than 1,100 per cent after the invasion; there is little doubt that they end up in the Russian military supply chain. Luxury car exports to another Russian ally, Azerbaijan, increased almost tenfold. Russia’s neighbours have abruptly become major consumers of machinery and consumer goods from Germany and Poland. No one is in any doubt as to where these exports really end up, but Western governments have been complacent in preventing them.
On 24 February, the third anniversary of the invasion, the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, announced what the government describes as the largest sanctions package against Russia since 2022. On the same day that the European Union announced its 16th package of sanctions on individuals, companies and ships linked to Russia’s war. A voter might reasonably ask why the previous 15 sets of sanctions, over three years, had not been strong enough.
The answer is that, as Mr Putin well knows, Western democracies do not want to impose the cost of his war – higher fuel prices, higher costs for businesses, inflation – on their own voters. Governments that do so risk being replaced. This dependence gives the leaders of autocratic petrostates an advantage; while the world runs on oil, we cannot fight those who sell it without incurring economic pain.
On 25 February, Mr Starmer announced the biggest rise in British defence spending since the end of the Cold War. From 2027 the UK will spend an additional £13.4bn per year on defence, taking the nation’s military budget above 2.5 per cent of GDP, with an aim for this to rise still further in the next parliament. The increase alone is about twice what the UK currently spends on its road network, and it can only be paid for by making very large cuts to overseas aid.
Like the energy crisis that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this hike in defence spending is a very expensive lesson in failing to plan ahead. Compromises on sanctions, a cautious approach to cleaning the dirty money from Britain’s economy, and above all an unwillingness to address the real cost of fossil fuels, may seem like pragmatic decisions in the moment. But one way or another, the bill must be paid.
[See also: Keir Starmer in Trumpworld]
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This article appears in the 26 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Britain in Trump’s World