If 2024 (19%) is more than the help to Ukraine that means the cut of cash flow to Russia i.e the drop from 45% to 19% (26%) is also more than the help to Ukraine.
> that is about 3 years later than it should have come
We can always wish it would be possible to arbitrarily turn a big faucet closed overnight, the harsh reality is that one can't turn their own economic, industrial, and ultimately social system to a grinding halt as well, which is counterproductive to any effort at fighting this war.
Note that the original plan from 2022 was to cut by two thirds within a year and completely by 2030, so 2027 is 3 years earlier.
You could argue that the mistake was to have 45% of pre-war gas imports coming from a single source... but it's hard to argue that EU is not pulling their weight in this fight given the hole they were in.
China and India is buying all the gas that Europe is not. Russia is doing pretty okay financially. And this helps China further undercut European industry.
Europe dug their own hole, against the advice of others. German diplomats were laughing at Trump in 2019 when he warned them against total dependency on Russian energy. They don't get extra points for creating the conditions for the war and then creating the conditions for its continuation.
I don't see how EU would have any bearing on China's policy to buy gas.
By definition if any money not spent by the EU is somehow compensated by China buying the then-unsold gas then EU decisions regarding spending money on Russian gas don't matter and the whole rhetoric falls on its face.
Germans were laughing at Trump because - however in a position of power he may be - he's a total clown. Everyone knew that the dependency was a problem, way before the war.
Fun fact, the U.S continues importing goods from Russia, including massive amounts of fertilisers, as well as palladium, uranium and plutonium.
But I see we're moving goalposts here, and the discussion is largely unproductive, so I'll disengage.
I share your opinions on the EU, sadly. Von Der Leyen and many others did a great job making skeptics of people like us.
However, I disagree that stopping to buy Russian fossil fuels is a great short term goal. It's not like they would ever have left it in the ground and go bankrupt as a consequence. While we buy shale oil and LNG from the US at a premium price, Russia just sells its supply to other countries, which use it to produce our food or manufactured goods. It's making us poorer and weaker but we can pretend our euros aren't buying weapons to kill Ukrainians.
We don't have natural resources, factories, armies, but at least we have the highest horse.
That is a fair point, and likely why we have not stopped buying gas from Russia. What I'm advocating for is not rash moralistic actions, but a course correction. Instead of making industry impossible in Europe and giving us no other choice than to move it to China, we need to make it easier to become independent of China.
And EU just decided last week to forbid all Russian gas imports starting Jan 1st 2027, among other things.
I don't think you have your story straight.