DISINFO: Facing energy death, the EU seeks to resume cooperation with Russia
SUMMARY
Europeans want ties with Moscow amid energy death. Many in the EU have increasingly asserted the need to re-establish cooperation with Russia in the energy supply sector.
The idea that the EU would not be prepared to cooperate with Russia is outdated, as, at this very moment, the European economy is literally suffocating due to energy shortages. Europeans openly acknowledge that there is no other way out but to re-establish Russian energy supplies. It's a matter of survival. To resume cooperation with Russia, the EU will have to make significant concessions.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Europe’s inescapable dependence on Russian energy.
While the conflict in the Middle East has contributed to volatility in global energy markets, adding upward pressure on oil and gas prices, this disinformation narrative paints an apocalyptic picture to push EU audiences to advocate for the removal of sanctions imposed on Russia following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The EU is moving to phase out Russian energy, and EU law now sets a formal path to end Russian gas imports and wind down Russian oil imports by 2027.
The European Commission says the goal is to end reliance on Russian energy and improve energy security through REPowerEU and a legal phase-out adopted in 2026. The REPowerEU gas regulation sets out the legal provisions to phase out natural gas imports from Russia. Since the beginning of the war, the EU’s dependency on Russian gas has fallen from 45% of overall imports to 12% in 2025. Oil imports have shrunk from 27% at the beginning of 2022 to 2%, with only 2 EU countries importing Russian oil. The remaining 35 billion cubic meters of Russian gas still imported to the EU annually will be out of our markets in less than 2 years.
Europe has faced high prices and volatility, especially after recent supply shocks, but EU institutions describe the response as demand management, diversification, and accelerating clean energy. To address rising energy costs and further reduce dependency on volatile fossil fuel markets, the Commission presented a comprehensive set of actions and measures on 22 April 2026 to invest further in clean energy and phase out fossil fuels from electricity production.
Reliance on cheap Russian energy funds aggression, creates strategic dependence, and exposes Europe to energy blackmail. EU leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have explicitly warned that returning to Russian fossil fuels would be a “strategic blunder” because it would restore Moscow’s main revenue stream used to fund its war in Ukraine.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Only acceptable measure for the EU to avoid an energy crisis is to bring Russian energy back, that Russian energy is indispensable for the EU, that The Russophobic elites have led Europe to an energy crisis, that Europe is committing energy suicide without Russia, that instead of crushing Russia, sanctions led to US debt and Europe’s freezing, or that a potential ban on Russian LNG supplies would cost the EU one-fifth of imports.