Fuelling Moscow’s war machine? U.S. and Europe are buying record levels of Russian energy exports October 16, 2026 The war in Ukraine has always been about fomenting a proxy war to defeat Russia. https://strategic-culture. su/news/2026/10/16/fuelling-moscows-war-machine-u-s-and-europe-are-buying-record-levels-of-russian-energy-exports/ The contradictions are absurd but instructive of the criminal proxy war that the U.S. and European powers have perpetrated against Russia under the guise of “defending Ukraine”. Western sanctions on Russia – the most heavily sanctioned nation on Earth – were meant to supposedly punish Moscow for its alleged unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. The United States recently signed into law a “sanctions bill from hell” in honor of the late war hawk Senator Lindsey Graham, aimed at crushing the Russian economy, principally by shutting down its energy exports. Likewise, the European Union has implemented more than 20 rounds of sanctions imposed on Russia over the past four years, again purportedly to block Russian exports of oil and gas. The EU has vowed to terminate all Russian energy imports by the end of this year. The official rationale out of Washington and European capitals is to exact retribution on Russia for its alleged invasion and violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Western embargoes on Russia’s economy were immediately announced after Moscow launched its Special Military Operation in February 2022. (The real background to the SMO – unreported by Western media – was the NATO-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, and the arming of NeoNazis to conduct a proxy war against Russia.) The U.S. and European Union, as well as Britain of course, presented the attempted economic blockade of Russia as a demonstration of the West enforcing international law and supporting Ukraine. The latter is portrayed in Western media as a fair maiden of democracy assailed by a drooling Russian tyrant. In a nutshell, the sanctions are sold to the Western public as a plausible way of neutralizing “Russia’s war machine.” If Moscow’s oil and gas exports could be cut off, then, the dubious logic goes, Russia would not be able to continue its war effort in Ukraine. However, laughably, the supposedly noble Western rationale is in tatters this week after the U.S. Treasury lifted sanctions off Russian diesel exports for the next six months in order to boost global oil supplies and curb soaring energy prices. Another shattering blow to the facade of Western “principles” was the disclosure by Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, that the European Union has continued to buy Russian energy exports at nearly pre-war levels. (Cue Western media silence on that!) Since 2022, the EU has bought a total of $320 billion worth of Russian hydrocarbons. To put the expenditure in perspective, that far exceeds what the European governments have donated to Ukraine, some $226 bn, according to EU data. eeas.europa.eu/delegations/u… How’s that for a contradiction? The European governments are throwing hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money at Ukraine supposedly to defend itself against Russia, yet these same governments are giving Russia much, much more by buying its energy resources. In other words, to use their own rhetoric, Brussels and other European capitals are “fuelling the Russian war machine.” As for the United States, it is equally duplicitous. The Americans blew up the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022 so that Europe would not be at the mercy of Russian oil dependency. Washington also imposed sanctions on Russian energy while increasing its more expensive gas exports to Europe. Yet last Friday, October 9, President Donald Trump announced, to the dismay and alarm of the Europeans and Ukraine, that he had made a deal with Vladimir Putin to release 3.5 million tonnes of Russian diesel onto the world market to ease pressure on crippling pump prices. Whatever happened to American laws against “trading with the enemy”? Of course, Trump is desperate for relief over record-high fuel prices as a result of his criminal aggression against Iran and Iran’s closure of the Persian Gulf oil route in retaliation. With the mid-term Congressional elections only three weeks away, Trump is seeking to assuage angry American consumers and spare his Republican Party from an electoral drubbing that will tarnish his presidency. Out of sheer expedience, Trump wants Russian diesel exports to save his political neck. Some observers may question whether Moscow should oblige Trump considering that Washington is arming the NeoNazi Kiev regime with missiles and intelligence. Perhaps the Kremlin is calculating that Trump could finally pull off a peace deal in Ukraine. Another smart move by Moscow, perhaps, is that the diesel deal with Trump has managed to unleash a storm of recriminations from Europe and Ukraine, which is severely undermining the transatlantic axis. Is this political judo by Putin? The European NATO partners and the Kiev puppet president Vladimir Zelensky reacted with unprecedented insults and defiance of Trump. They accused the American leader of treachery and of siding with Russia. Within Washington, Trump has also been lambasted for “betrayal”. Trump and his aides hit back furiously, dismissing the Europeans as “hypocrites” over their own record purchases of Russian energy exports. Trump even called for Zelensky to be replaced by someone who he can work with. For his part, Zelensky doubled down with truculence, badmouthing Trump for being “weak” and accusing him of putting Ukrainian lives at risk. He refused to stop Ukrainian air strikes on Russia’s oil refineries, as requested by the White House. And the little money-grabbing, narco-Führer also attempted blackmail by suggesting to Trump that he would halt air attacks on Russian energy infrastructure “if” the Pentagon supplied more Patriot missiles. Trump’s anger has exploded over Zelensky and his European patrons. He sees their obstruction of his diesel deal with Russia as not only hypocritical but a political attack on his presidency ahead of the crucial November polls. The debacle is a rich farce. American and European posturing is seen for what it is, without any principle or genuine motives. It is a plague on all their houses. Both the U.S. and its European partners are buying Russian energy like never before to sustain their struggling economies. The sanctions they imposed on Russia never had anything to do with “upholding international law” or “defending Ukraine”. Using their own disingenuous logic, the NATO nations are fuelling the Russian war machine with their continuing business-as-usual purchase of Russia’s oil and gas. That contradiction, in turn, exposes the fraud of the war in Ukraine. It was never about defending democratic Ukraine – a corrupt NeoNazi dictatorship – or European security from Russian “threat”. The whole murderous episode has always been about fomenting a proxy war to defeat Russia. That covert policy is a gargantuan crime of aggression that has cost millions of lives and bankrupted Western societies. What’s more, it is an utterly failed policy which Western governments are covering up to avoid accountability. The destruction and deception go hand in hand. What is all the more damning is that this travesty could have been easily exposed years ago if the Western news media had actually reported on facts instead of being the propaganda service they so evidently are to enable criminal aggression by their imperialist masters.