How Did Europe Get Hooked On Russian Energy?

This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Paul J. Davies: You’re a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge and author of “Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century,” which analyzes how the interplay of energy, finance and international politics have contributed to the crises we face today. Let’s start with Ukraine directly. How much of Russia’s invasion is due to Putin’s seeking security for Russian gas exports through Ukraine’s pipelines? Or did he perceive Western weakness because of Europe’s reliance on Russian energy?

Helen Thompson, professor of political economy, University of Cambridge and author, “Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century”: It’s more of the second than the first. I don’t think we could say that the situation of gas transit through Ukraine was a motive for Putin. What we can say is that for the last two decades, Putin tried to weaken Ukraine’s position economically by eliminating it from the transit system for the export of Russia’s gas and oil. He didn’t succeed, but the way he went about it was very divisive within the European Union. Poland was convinced that trying to remove Ukraine from transit would weaken Ukraine. Meanwhile, the European Commission was rather more tolerant of the pipeline that went under the Baltic Sea, Nord Stream, which took gas from Russia to Germany, than it was for what was coming into southern Europe under the Black Sea. The fact that there were double standards for Russian gas coming in different pipelines caused internal European disunity that to a considerable extent Putin sought to exploit.