Sweden’s foreign minister Maria Malmer Stenergard has warned that European Union states have, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, paid Russia around €124 billion more for imports than they have provided in support to Ukraine – a calculation now widely reported in the Swedish press.
Speaking ahead of an EU foreign affairs meeting in Brussels on 20 November, Malmer Stenergard set out the figures in an interview with Swedish public broadcaster SVT. She said that since February 2022 the EU had provided a total of €187 billion in support to Ukraine, while over the same period EU countries had bought Russian oil and gas worth €201 billion, and imported other Russian goods taking the total import bill to €311 billion.
According to the minister, this leaves what she described as a negative balance of €124 billion when EU aid to Kyiv is set against continuing payments to Moscow. SVT’s live report on the Brussels meeting highlighted her criticism of what she called the EU’s “contradictory” stance: providing substantial assistance to Ukraine while still paying large sums for Russian energy and other exports.
Tabloid Aftonbladet, citing the Swedish TT news agency, reported that Malmer Stenergard arrived at the Brussels meeting carrying a sign spelling out how much more member states had paid Russia for oil and gas than they had given to Ukraine. “It is utterly deplorable that the EU and European countries are not doing more to support Ukraine,” she told Swedish reporters, describing the net result as “negative support” once total imports from Russia are deducted and adding that “we should be ashamed.”
The specialist outlet Europaportalen, which covers EU affairs in Swedish, described her message to fellow ministers as “unusually sharp”. It repeated the same figures – €187 billion in support for Ukraine versus €311 billion in imports from Russia – and quoted Malmer Stenergard’s remark that this amounted to “negative support for Ukraine of €124 billion”. The site also reported her warning that there would be no “reasonable peace negotiations” unless support for Kyiv is increased and pressure on Moscow is intensified.
Swedish media also highlighted that the minister linked her calculation directly to the stalled EU debate on frozen Russian assets. Aftonbladet and other outlets noted that the sign she displayed in Brussels was aimed at the ongoing negotiations over the next major EU support package for Ukraine and the question of whether frozen Russian state assets held in Europe can be used as collateral for a large loan. Malmer Stenergard told TT that “a very good start” would be to use those frozen assets “for the benefit of Ukraine”.
Belgium features prominently in both Swedish and wider European reporting. The bulk of frozen Russian central bank reserves in the EU are held at the Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear, and Belgian concerns over legal and financial risks have so far blocked agreement on an EU “reparations loan” backed by those assets. Swedish coverage notes that Malmer Stenergard accepts that Belgium has “legitimate objections” but argues that other member states should provide the guarantees needed for Brussels to feel able to proceed.
At European level, the European Commission has circulated options for using frozen Russian assets to raise around €140 billion for Ukraine without formal confiscation, either through a loan structure or alternative financial engineering. EU leaders failed to reach agreement at their October summit, but are due to return to the issue at a meeting on 18 December. Ukrainian officials have told Reuters that this will be the last opportunity this year to take a political decision on the loan, which Kyiv regards as critical for covering funding needs from 2026 onwards.
Kyiv has repeatedly pressed for swift movement. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged EU governments to overcome internal divisions and use frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction, a position reported both in Ukrainian and European media. Russia, for its part, has warned that any move beyond using the interest on immobilised assets would trigger a “painful” response, while the head of Euroclear has said she cannot rule out legal action if the EU forces through a plan that directly impacts the underlying funds.
Malmer Stenergard has in parallel criticised what she sees as an imbalance in burden-sharing within NATO, telling the Swedish news app Omni that the Nordic countries, with a combined population of around 30 million, account for roughly a third of the alliance’s military support to Ukraine – a situation she described as neither fair nor sustainable in the long term.
Taken together, the figures advanced by Sweden’s foreign minister and widely relayed in the Swedish press frame the EU’s policy in stark numerical terms: €187 billion for Ukraine, €311 billion paid to Russia, and a net flow of €124 billion in the opposite direction to the Union’s stated geopolitical objective. Whether that “negative support” is reduced will depend on decisions in Brussels over the coming weeks on future aid packages and the use of frozen Russian assets – decisions that Stockholm has now placed firmly in the public spotlight.
