Dear Daily Disaster Diary, November 01 2025

Europe’s Gas Addiction: How the EU Still Funds Putin’s War

On New Year’s Day 2027 — fourteen long months from now — the European Union plans to stop buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia. Fourteen months. Fourteen months during which Vladimir Putin can still fund his genocidal war in Ukraine with European money.

This is what moral bankruptcy looks like in high definition.

Yes, it’s “good news” that the EU finally wants to end its dependence on Russian gas. But it’s also grotesque that it took three years of mass murder, bombed maternity wards, and industrial-scale war crimes to reach that conclusion — and that the cash pipeline is still open.

Since the 2022 invasion, EU imports from Russia have fallen by 89%. Sounds impressive — until you look at the leftovers. What remains is still enormous. The biggest stream of money flowing into Putin’s war chest now comes from LNG exports — the frozen blood of Siberia shipped through the Arctic to European terminals from Spain’s Huelva to Lithuania’s Klaipėda. The EU remains, to this day, Russia’s largest LNG customer — well ahead of China and Japan. And the thirst is growing.

In the first half of 2025, European buyers purchased more Russian LNG than the year before.

According to Greenpeace, Russia’s state-linked exporter Yamal LNG sold €34 billion worth of LNG during the first three years of the war, paying €8.15 billion in taxes to the Kremlin. That’s enough to buy 9.5 million artillery shells, 271,000 long-range drones, or nearly 2,700 T-90M tanks — all weapons currently shredding Ukrainian families in their sleep.

Europe, meanwhile, debates “values.”

To be fair, not all of this money comes from Europe. But two-thirds of it does. France, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands are hopelessly hooked — so much so that, since 2022, they’ve paid more money to Russia for gas than they’ve sent to Ukraine in aid.

Germany, of course, plays its part. Berlin confirmed in the summer of 2025 that SEFE — the state-owned successor to Gazprom Germania — would receive 50 shipments of Russian Arctic LNG this year alone, worth about €2 billion.

This is what addiction looks like when wrapped in democracy and hypocrisy.

European leaders feared the “short-term pain” of a full cutoff — higher prices, inflation, potential recession. So instead, they opted to keep the blood money flowing, pumping billions into Putin’s war economy while pretending to defend Ukraine’s freedom.

The result? Europe is financing both the murderer and the mortician.

For every euro Europe thought it was saving by buying cheap Russian gas, it spent another euro — or ten — to defend against the terror that same gas paid for.

It’s a financial ouroboros — a continent devouring its own moral tail.

Zbigniew Libera once created a photo installation called People Burning Money. In it, ordinary citizens stand in daylight, lighting bills on fire. That’s Europe now — except the flames aren’t metaphorical. In Ukraine, people are burning. Children, hospitals, kindergartens.

And this sickness isn’t new.

The money you gave the Catholic Church paid for lawyers to cover up child abuse.
The money you gave right-wing parties became propaganda that fueled hate crimes.
The taxes you paid in good faith disappeared into the black hole of bureaucracy, corruption, and defense contracts that protect no one.
The gas you keep buying from Russia keeps the missiles flying over Kharkiv.

Every euro, dollar, or pound we spend carelessly in the name of “comfort” becomes a weapon in someone else’s hand.

Europe’s addiction to comfort — cheap energy, cheap goods, cheap morality — has become its deadliest weakness.

And while democracies drain their treasuries defending themselves from wars they themselves fund, populists like the AfD, Le Pen, and Orbán’s Fidesz feast on public outrage. The same outrage that they helped create.

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So what now?

If the EU truly wants to stop financing tyranny, it needs more than a 2027 deadline. It needs a moral embargo.

1. Cut Russian LNG now. No more excuses about “contracts.” Contracts don’t justify complicity.

2. Invest massively in renewables and local grids. Energy independence is the new defense policy.

3. Audit national budgets for complicity. Every euro that indirectly funds aggression — whether through gas, trade, or shadow subsidiaries — must be exposed and sanctioned.

4. Educate citizens where their money really goes. Energy bills, taxes, donations — transparency is power.

5. End moral outsourcing. Stop pretending it’s someone else’s problem. The enemy isn’t “out there.” It’s our own convenience.

Europe doesn’t need another round of sanctions. It needs a detox.

Because until the continent learns to live without the comfort of cheap cruelty, it will keep financing its own destruction — one tanker, one euro, one moral compromise at a time.

yours truly,

Adaptation-Guide