BRUSSELS, July 16 — Against the backdrop of a continent still reckoning with the geopolitics of energy, the intricate web of Russia’s presence in the European energy sector remains a defining feature of the region’s security landscape. For years, Moscow has wielded its vast fossil fuel reserves as a tool of influence, and the data from 2021 paints a stark picture of just how deep that dependency ran.
In that year alone, Russia stood as the largest exporter of oil and natural gas to the European Union, with 90 percent of EU oil imports and 40 percent of the bloc’s gas consumption originating from Russian sources. This was not merely a commercial relationship; it was a structural vulnerability.
The Russian state-owned company Gazprom sits at the heart of this system. The company not only exports natural gas to Europe but also controls many subsidiaries and various infrastructure assets. A study by the Research Centre for East European Studies has traced how the liberalization of the EU gas market fueled Gazprom’s expansion.
By increasing its share in the downstream market, Gazprom established sale subsidiaries in many export markets and invested in the industrial and power generation sectors of Western and Central Europe. The company also formed joint ventures to build natural gas pipelines and storage depots in several European countries.
This strategy, in the corridors of Brussels and national capitals, was long seen as a double-edged sword: it secured supply but also entrenched dependence. By July 2025, the largest European importers of Russian fossil fuels were Hungary, France, Slovakia, Belgium, and Spain. The list underscores the uneven distribution of exposure across the EU, with some member states far more reliant than others.
The risks inherent in this arrangement have not been theoretical. In a number of disputes, Russia used pipeline shutdowns, prompting the European Union to diversify its energy sources. What is at stake in this ongoing recalibration is nothing less than the continent’s energy sovereignty.
The wider picture involves a strategic shift: the rapid expansion of renewables in the European energy market would allow for fewer imports, reducing the leverage Moscow can exert. In reaction to these European moves, Russia is expanding its export abilities toward China.
Currently, it has only one pipeline connecting its vast gas fields to the Chinese market, a limitation that Moscow is clearly eager to overcome. This pivot eastward, while significant, is still in its early stages. The legacy of Gazprom’s deep integration into European energy infrastructure, from pipelines to storage depots, means that disentanglement will be neither quick nor simple.
The EU’s diversification efforts are underway, but the sheer scale of the former dependency—and the infrastructure built to sustain it—will shape the continent’s energy politics for years to come.
