US data shows Europe, not India, drove Russian oil revenues during Ukraine war

The United States has long accused India of funding Russia’s war effort by importing large volumes of crude oil from Moscow. However, newly released figures by the US government now undercut this argument, showing that European countries, not India, were the largest financial contributors to Russia during the Ukraine war. US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has disclosed data indicating that several European nations effectively provided Russia with more money through energy purchases than they gave to Ukraine in financial aid. The revelation comes ahead of Landau’s official visit to Europe later this week.

According to Landau, he had requested the State Department to prepare a detailed breakdown comparing two figures for European countries that the financial aid extended to Ukraine and the value of Russian oil and energy products purchased by them. The period covered was from February 2022, when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, to January 2025, when Donald Trump was re-elected as President of the United States. Landau said he was taken aback by the findings, which he described publicly on X. The data focused on countries that either provided more than one billion dollars (approximately Rs 9,000 crore at current exchange rates) in aid to Ukraine or spent more than one billion dollars on Russian energy imports during the same period.

Financial aid includes both grants and loans. According to the data cited by Landau, countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Finland, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary and Serbia purchased Russian oil and other goods worth more than the financial assistance they extended to Ukraine. Many of these countries provided less than $5 billion in total support to Kyiv, while purchasing Russian oil and energy products valued between $5 billion and more than $30 billion. This spending, Landau noted, directly contributed to Russia’s revenue even as the war continued.

The figures also show that the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway bought Russian oil and goods but still provided greater financial assistance to Ukraine than the value of their imports. Denmark and Switzerland, on the other hand, neither purchased significant quantities of Russian energy nor provided substantial aid to Ukraine. These disclosures stand in sharp contrast to Washington’s stance toward India.

The United States recently imposed a steep 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods, arguing that New Delhi was helping sustain President Vladimir Putin’s war by increasing Russian oil imports after February 2022. India remains the only country penalised by the Trump administration on this specific ground. Landau’s figures now directly challenge that narrative, raising questions about why India was singled out, while European countries with far larger financial linkages to Russian energy faced no comparable action.