The European Union imported €197bn ($209bn) of energy from Russia between March 2022 and July 2026, the European Commission said on Tuesday. The number comes from Comext, the external-trade database managed by Eurostat, and is Brussels' answer to two much larger tallies that have circulated in recent days.
The first is Russian. Late on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told the state broadcaster Vesti that the bloc had bought €302bn of Russian energy: "The figure for the period from 2022 to the present stands at $320.7 billion," he said. That is roughly $112bn above the Commission's count.
The second is American. The same day, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that the EU had paid Russia $250bn (€223bn) — some $41bn above the European figure.
Why the numbers do not match
Novak did not say which commodities were included, what valuation method he used, or the exact period: he spoke of "2022 to the present". The Commission's window begins in March 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, and runs to July this year — different cut-offs over the same flow produce different totals before any disagreement over method.
Brussels declined to engage with the rival figures. "I'm not in the position to confirm other people's numbers," said spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen.
What REPowerEU changed
According to the Commission, without REPowerEU — the plan to cut dependence on Russian energy launched in 2022 — the bloc would have spent €475bn over the period, or €278bn more than it did. Russia's share of EU energy imports fell from 42–45% in 2022 to 12% now, and by 2023 payments to Russia already accounted for about 6% of everything the bloc spent on fossil fuels.
"A clear declining trend of our dependency on Russia," Itkonen said.
The 1 January 2027 deadline
The buying has not stopped. The EU plans to phase out Russian gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 1 January 2027, and exemptions still apply to landlocked countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, and to holders of long-term contracts. "For the time being, it is still allowed to import some energy from Russia," the spokesperson said.
Novak, for his part, said deliveries to Europe totalled $21.3bn in the first nine months of 2026, and that LNG shipped via the Arctic route earned €9.7bn over the same stretch.
With information from the European Commission, Euronews and Novinite.
