By EUvsDisinfo
The pro-Kremlin disinformation machine is seeking to undermine the EU’s sanctions policy by attacking its Green Deal.
In its quest for the tiniest bit of news that could be twisted to undermine liberal democracy around the world, the Kremlin’s disinformation machine occasionally seizes on an issue that it otherwise treats with disinterest or disdain.
So it is with climate change. The pro-Kremlin disinformation ecosystem tends to ignore it: The COP30 climate conference, scheduled to take place in Brazil in November, has so far failed to trigger any particular interest from the usual outlets. But earlier this summer, the adoption of the EU’s 18th package of sanctions triggered Moscow to use the EU’s Green Deal as ammunition in its hybrid war against the West.
Carbon-based disinformation
Russia’s economic performance, and hence its ability to continue its war against Ukraine, is based on the extraction, use, and export of fossil fuels. It is little surprise, then, that the Kremlin views the European Union’s green agenda and its decarbonisation drive as a direct threat to its imperialist expansion.
Over the years, the Kremlin FIMI machine has created a number of narratives about Europe’s strategic transition from a carbon-based economy towards sustainability. It has claimed that green energy is a costly fraud, that renewable energy is a failure, and that the EU’s energy and climate policies are short-sighted and damaging to its own economy.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The EU’s green agenda, including the European Green Deal and the Clean Industrial Deal, reduces emissions to protect our climate. But it does so by reducing our dependency on Russian fossil fuels and by strengthening our economy. Since 1990, EU emissions have decreased while the economy has grown, proving that economic growth and emission reductions go together. Prosperity and sustainability are not contradictions – the green transition and endorsing future growth sectors is the only way to guarantee economic flourishing in a world that is moving away from fossil fuels.
Yet recent Russia keeps spreading its false narratives.
In Poland, pro-Kremlin outlets falsely claimed that the EU’s Green Deal was ‘killing Polish farmers’ and industry – the foundations of the national economy. Another Polish outlet wrote that ‘European industry is paralysed’ because of high energy prices, which is caused by the ‘self-destructive policies of Brussels and Berlin’. These unfounded narratives are used to undermine trust in EU climate measures, portraying them as elite-driven schemes that harm ordinary citizens, a key Kremlin method to fracture societal consensus.
Green protectionism
Another common FIMI narrative claims that the EU’s green agenda is in fact a tool to slow down economic growth in the Global South and eliminate potential economic competitors. For instance, claims that European countries use ‘green protectionism’ to ensure that the benefits of trade go to them only, and accused France of using environmental issues to block imports from Latin America.
The Kremlin advances these narratives to question the EU’s motives and credibility on climate policy. The EU, for its part, always listens to partners and links climate regulations with financial and technical support for partner countries. Policies like the CBAM can affect third countries, but they include provisions that consider local climate measures. Ultimately, CBAM helps countries to gear their economies towards future-proofed low-carbon industries. The EU helps them in this transition, being the world’s biggest climate finance donor, and with initiatives such as the €300 billion Global Gateway for energy transition and infrastructure.
Protecting oil with propaganda
But what really animates these outlets as they lament the allegedly adverse effects of EU green policies is a very different concern: the EU’s sanctions against Russia, and in particular, its energy sector which has been a top priority for the Kremlin ever since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
These sanctions, it is falsely alleged, are ineffective: they have failed to hurt the Russian economy but have instead deepened Europe’s economic crisis. Europe is supposedly committing economic suicide by cutting itself off from Russian energy. Companies are warning of production relocating abroad and a loss of jobs, all due to the EU’s sanctions, according to Russia’s FIMI narratives.
At the end of 2022, Russia ran online ads claiming that Europe’s rejection of Russian oil and gas would trigger a new ‘ice age’ on the continent, forcing freezing Europeans to flock to Russia – where, the ads boasted, people could still afford electricity and heating. The message was clear: abandoning Russian energy would lead to catastrophe.
But phasing out Russian energy has been a deliberate strategy by the EU to protect itself from coercion, diversify supply, and accelerate investment in reliable, affordable renewable energy and modern infrastructure. Russia has proven itself to be an unreliable energy supplier through repeated supply disruptions, such as the 2006 and 2022 gas cut-offs. The use of energy as a geopolitical tool to exert political and economic pressure, and manipulative practices by Russian gas suppliers, have posed a significant risk to the EU’s energy stability and have accelerated the EU’s urgent efforts to diversify its energy sources and reduce dependence on Russian gas.
When Moscow shouts about ‘green tyranny’ or ‘climate fraud’, it is not debating environmental policy – it is weaponising disinformation to protect its oil and gas empire. Europe’s Green Deal threatens the Kremlin’s revenues and strategic leverage, and so the disinformation machine shifts into overdrive. That is not a reason to stray away from our course towards energy independence – it proves the point and is reason to double-down on the green transition.
Russia’s oil and gas industry remains the main source of funding for its war in Ukraine, which is why the Kremlin so desperately seeks to frame Europe as dependent on this business – to keep the flow of money, and the war machine it sustains, alive.
Don’t be deceived.
By EUvsDisinfo
