EU 'Celebrates' Replacing One Massive Energy Dependency With Another One
EU member states on Monday finally signed off on a legally binding ban on Russian gas imports, locking in a hard deadline to sever the bloc's remaining dependence on Russian energy flows by late 2027.
The move turns Brussels' long-running pledge to cut Moscow energy loose into enforceable law, nearly four years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or what Putin calls the Special Military Operation, which has still not been legally declared by Russia to be an official state of war.
Under the deal, the EU will shut the door on all Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports by the end of 2026, followed by a complete ban on pipeline gas by September 30, 2027.
A limited escape hatch was built in for those countries struggling to replace Russian supply and fill storage ahead of winter. These can push the pipeline cutoff to November 1, 2027.
Before 2022, Russia accounted for more than 40% of the EU's gas supply - a figure which has fallen to roughly 13% by 2025. But there's still a sizeable gap between Brussels' political messaging and the bloc's actual energy behavior. As Reuters reports:
Last month, the five biggest EU importers spent 1.4 billion euros ($1.66 billion) on Russian energy, mostly on gas and LNG, data from the non-profit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air showed. Hungary was the biggest buyer, before France and Belgium.
Here's how the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, announced the ban Tuesday: "We have just signed the ban on Russian gas into law. Europe is securing control of our energy supply and strengthening our autonomy."
There's only one obvious problem in all this from a supposed European 'energy independence' perspective, summarized well in the following:
They’ve just locked themselves into total dependency on the US, the country they claim to want to become “independent” from. Utter clowns. https://t.co/yO5UdBMTAY
— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) January 27, 2026
Another commenter, a European libertarian, reacted as follows:
What an idiot stooge, willing to do anything for power. This is the tragedy of Europe: with such a "leadership" we assure our continued submissiveness to the US.
And journalist Mark Ames roundly mocks these new 'boasts' EU energy freedom in the following remarks, and invoking the Greenland crisis, on the below clip:
Danish PM bragging how they swapped out their dependence on cheap Russian gas, which posed a theoretical threat, for dependence on expensive US gas, a direct existential threat to Denmark. Must be that high European IQ that race science weirdos rave about.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 26, 2026
I think, or I hope, that all Europeans can now see that it was a huge mistake to be dependent on Russian fossil fuels. We should never have been.
And now we have to make sure that we will have no dependencies on other countries outside… pic.twitter.com/J9o6c0HXYe
"We’ve replaced one massive dependency with another one," Henning Gloystein, a managing director for energy at Eurasia Group, told The NY Times. "That looked fine three years ago, but now it doesn't."
That same Tuesday NYT report points out that soon after the Feb.2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, "The United States came to the rescue. Tankers loaded at U.S. terminals shipped large volumes of liquefied natural gas to European ports in the Netherlands, France and Belgium, among other destinations, helping to replace the Russian fuel and calming markets."
And the report follows with this epic and ironic line, highlighting the elephant in the room: "Not long ago, those gas flows looked heroic. Now, they are raising eyebrows. Since beginning his second term, President Trump has sought to use trade as leverage in disputes with other countries, including his recent push to take over Greenland."