Populist Sweden Democrats (SD) leader Jimmie Åkesson has slammed European Green politicians, blaming their policies for making Europe reliant on Russian energy and enriching the country.
Åkesson said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war have been exacerbated by Green policies, such as closing down nuclear plants, that have led to a dependence on supplies of natural gas and oil from Russia.
“The option of refraining from imposing sanctions involving Russian gas and oil was, in my opinion, never a real possibility. This is because 40 per cent of Russia’s GDP comes from oil and gas exports, money that goes straight into Putin’s war chest,” Åkesson wrote in an opinion article for newspaper Expressen.
“A war chest that the West, because of naïve politicians, has already financed for a long time, in its search for cheap energy. It is not a morally justifiable act and, with hindsight, it is about pure blood money,” he added.
Labelling the Greens “the useful idiots of Russia and Putin,” Åkesson went on to blame the shutting down of nuclear reactors in Sweden for soaring electricity prices in the south of the country.
To counter the surge in fuel prices, Åkesson stated that the government should reduce fuel taxes and reduce the electricity tax by 25 per cent.
“The government blames ‘Putin prices’ but the fact is that about 55 per cent of fuel prices are tax. Our neighbouring countries do not suffer from the same sky-high prices. Difference? Swedish politicians,” he said.
“In fact, early closures of Swedish nuclear power, the permission of Russian gas exports through Swedish waters and bans on uranium mining on Swedish soil, have seriously contributed to enabling Putin’s war in Ukraine. All of this could have been stopped by Swedish politicians. It is high time for new politicians, politicians who are not Putin’s useful idiots,” he said.
The Russian government has also been accused of covertly funding anti-fossil fuel groups in Europe in order to keep Europeans dependent on Russian energy, with the former Danish prime minister of Anders Fogh Rasmussen accusing Russia of working with environmentalist NGOs in 2014 when Rasmussen served as the head of NATO.
“I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas,” Rasmussen said at the time.
In 2017, United States congressmen Lamar Smith and Randy Weber wrote a letter to then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claiming that Russia had used shell companies in Bermuda to funnel money to various NGOs and claimed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had admitted at a private dinner that Russia funded NGOs.
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