Record Russian Gas Imports: Europe Is Quitting, Just Not Yet

Between January and September 2026, Europe set a record that nobody in Brussels is putting in a press release. According to an analysis of Kpler shipping data by the campaign group Urgewald, EU ports received 12.18 million tonnes of liquefied gas from Russia's Yamal project, up 9.5 per cent on the same period last year. Estimated value: around €7.9 billion. Europe took roughly 85 per cent of Yamal's deliveries. The rest of the world bought less. Europe did not.

Technically this is not a scandal but a timetable. Short-term contracts have been banned since April; the full ban on long-term contracts only starts on 1 January 2027. Until then, the logic of the New Year's resolution applies: the diet starts Monday, today is still buffet day. In September almost three quarters of EU volumes went to France, via the Dunkirk and Montoir terminals.

Europe is paying for its strategic independence from Russia the traditional way: in instalments, to Russia.

There is a new variable too. A US sanctions law gives Washington leverage from 18 October that could hit Yamal's customers. Whether the last cargoes arrive before the ban may then be decided not in Brussels but in the White House. Sovereignty, it turns out, is when someone else gets a say in your gas bill.