This is reported by the “Welt” newspaper, citing current data from a Brussels consulting firm. The USA has been pushed down to third place. According to the data, the United States sent 12.27 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by tanker to customers in the EU in the second quarter of this year. Russia delivered slightly more, at around 12.73 billion cubic meters. Moscow used three delivery routes: In addition to tanker loads of liquefied natural gas, 4.1 billion cubic meters came to the European Union via the Ukraine transit, which is still functioning.
Deliveries via the Black Sea pipeline “Turkstream”, financed by Gazprom, have also increased, transporting around a third more than in the same period last year. Natural gas imports from Russia are not sanctioned by the European Union due to the high level of dependence of individual member states. “It is a scandal that the EU is knowingly allowing Russia to become a major exporter of gas to Europe again,” said CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen to the “Welt”: “The Europeans are supporting Ukraine with billions and at the same time paying billions into Putin’s war chest – that is neither responsible, nor rational, nor credible.” Röttgen spoke out in favor of an EU-wide ban on imports of Russian natural gas. “The EU could have been working on a substitution strategy for a long time,” said Röttgen: “Drying up the sources of income that Putin needs to wage war is an important step to end the war. Unfortunately, the traffic light government has so far proved to be a total failure in this area too.” The energy policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Michael Kruse, believes that the President of the European Commission has a duty: “Ursula von der Leyen must provide an effective European strategy to reduce Russian gas imports.” His suggestion: “In order to combat Putin and his war rage, the EU could also pay a fixed amount for aid and arms deliveries to Ukraine for every cubic meter of Russian gas imported. In this way, Putin would pay for the resistance to his barbaric attacks himself.”
