Issue Brief on “Energy, Sanctions, and Strategic Vulnerability: The EU and Russia after the...

Introduction

The Iran war and the severe disruption of the Strait of Hormuz have generated a major energy-security shock with uneven consequences for the European Union (EU) and the Russian Federation. For the EU, the crisis has revived the vulnerabilities exposed after the Ukraine conflict: dependence on imported energy, sensitivity to global LNG prices, inflationary pressure, and risks to industrial competitiveness. For Russia, the impact is more ambivalent. Moscow benefits in the short term from higher oil prices and increased demand for non-Gulf energy supplies. However, this windfall is constrained by sanctions, infrastructure attacks, production limits, fiscal pressures, and the long-term erosion of Russia's European energy market. The crisis therefore does not produce a simple "EU loss-Russia gain" equation. Instead, it reveals two different forms of economic vulnerability: Europe's exposure as a net energy importer and Russia's dependence on hydrocarbon rents in a fragmented global energy order.

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