French firm supplies fuel for Russian warplanes bombing Ukraine: report
France’s energy giant TotalEnergies is providing fuel for Russian fighter jets bombing Ukraine, news outlets have reported.
France’s energy giant TotalEnergies is supplying fuel for Russian warplanes bombing Ukraine, news outlets reported on Wednesday.PAP/Abaca/Blondet Eliot
TotalEnergies is the only French energy group that continues to do business in Russia, Poland’s interia.pl website wrote on Wednesday, citing the French newspaper Le Monde.
Through a joint venture with Russia’s Novatek, called Terneftegaz, TotalEnergies is mining a gas deposit in Siberia and supplying gas to Russia, interia.pl reported.
The gas is turned into kerosene and used to fuel Russian fighter jets bombing Ukraine, interia.pl said, quoting Le Monde.
„Le Monde was able to trace the supply chain from the Termokarstovoye gas field in Siberia to two military air bases (Morozovskaya and Malchevo), each of which houses a squadron of multirole fighter aircraft,” the French newspaper reported, as cited by the Reuters news agency.
Fuel that helped bomb Mariupol
According to Amnesty International and other human-rights groups, air strikes against civilians, including Ukraine’s devastated southern city of Mariupol, were likely carried out with warplanes from bases in the region, including Morozovskaya and Malchevo, Reuters reported.
„Total has not denied that gas condensate from its joint venture is ultimately refined into jet fuel for the Russian Air Force”, Louis Wilson, an adviser to the Global Witness campaign group, told Reuters. „Ignorance is no excuse.”
Ukraine’s warnings
Meanwhile, Oleg Ustenko, an aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, said: “We’ve been warning companies for months that by buying this fuel, they are financing the murder of Ukrainian civilians,” interia.pl reported.
‘Our partner in Russia is a private company’: Total’s CEO
Total’s CEO Patrick Pouyanne stated in June that “Our partner in Russia [Novatek] is a private company; if they were linked to the Russian state, our analysis would definitely be different,” as cited by interia.pl.
In July, the French giant posted Q2 2022 profits of USD 5.7 billion, a record, the Polish website noted.
TotalEnergies has several multibillion-euro investments in Russia, including stakes in the Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2 projects, according to the Reuters news agency.
The office of French President Emmanuel Macron declined to comment on the Le Monde report and TotalEnergies’ investments, Reuters said.
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Source: biznes.interia.pl, Reuters
