Enlightened EU Meets the Backward Greek Pirates Who Don't Want to Sink Their Ships for Sanctions Virtue

Robin Brooks, who spends his days posting charts from his substack bunker, has decided that Greek tanker operators - owners of one of the world's largest merchant fleets - are single-handedly keeping Putin in caviar by transporting Russian oil. Legally. Under the rules the West themselves wrote. The horror.

The latest dispute concerns the EU’s 21st sanctions package and a proposed ban on European companies transporting Russian LNG to countries outside the Union.

Brussels began by removing caviar from European tables (The 2022 fifth package banned Russian high-end seafood, including caviar), and has now advanced to cod, steadily working down the Russian menu until peace emerges somewhere, hopefully, before the dessert. The proposed 21st package would extend restrictions to ordinary fish products and completely ban Russian cod.

Greece Discovers Its Backward National Interest

Greece objected because the measure would severely damage Dynagas, a Greek company operating highly specialised Arc7 vessels built to transport LNG through Arctic waters from Russia’s Yamal facility.

Dynagas operates 27 gas carriers, including roughly one third of the Arc7 fleet serving Yamal. These ships cost hundreds of millions of dollars and cannot simply be reassigned to delivering organic olives between Mykonos and Marseille.

Athens warned that banning European operators would not necessarily stop the cargoes. It would transfer the business to competitors from the United States, China, Japan and other countries not participating in the prohibition.

This is precisely the kind of crude commercial reasoning that enlightened European sanctions policy was created to overcome.

The Pirate Industry

Greece’s attachment to shipping is difficult to understand unless one remembers that Greeks have only been involved in maritime commerce for several thousand years and may therefore have developed certain habits.

Greek-controlled shipping accounts for about one fifth of global carrying capacity.

The sector contributes an estimated 7 to 8 percent of Greek GDP and supports approximately 200,000 jobs. Greece also controls most of the European Union’s merchant fleet, giving the continent one of the few industries in which it remains genuinely dominant worldwide.

An advanced European economy should not depend on industries that generate export revenue.

Europe Continues Buying Russian LNG, Responsibly

The moral urgency surrounding Greek transport business, placed beside Europe’s own Russian LNG imports, becomes much more visible.

During the first half of 2026, the European Union imported a record 9.97 million tonnes of LNG from Russia’s Yamal facility, 16 percent more than during the same period in 2025. More than 97 percent of Yamal’s cargoes went to EU ports, principally in France, Belgium and Spain.

Long-term contracts remain permitted until January 1, 2027.

A Greek vessel carrying Russian LNG to a customer outside Europe is an assault on democracy.

Russian gas becomes manageable when unloaded in France. It becomes particularly European when the Russian project producing it includes a stake held by France’s TotalEnergies.

From Russian Dependence to American Dependence

Europe has nevertheless made tremendous progress in escaping Russian energy dependence by becoming more dependent on a different foreign country.

The United States supplied almost 58 percent of EU LNG imports in 2025 and remained the Union’s largest LNG supplier in the first quarter of 2026. American LNG imports have roughly tripled since 2021.

Much of the gas originates in American shale formations and is extracted through hydraulic fracturing (fracking) before being processed, liquefied, shipped across the Atlantic and converted back into gas in Europe. The additional industrial stages and ocean journey are are the price of freedom.

After arriving at a European terminal, the LNG is greeted by climate-neutral woodland creatures wearing tiny EU badges, who certify that fracking is sustainable once the tanker has crossed the Atlantic.

The United States benefits from the arrangement, naturally. Washington promotes American energy exports because Washington understands that governments are supposed to promote their own industries.

Under Trump, the United States barely needs to force the issue. Trump can support negotiations with Russia while also preferring that Europe continue buying American LNG. Peace and commercial advantage are, from his angle, perfectly compatible.

Ethical Energy from Approved Authoritarian States

Europe’s new energy morality is not limited to American fracked gas only.

LNG from Qatar qualifies as diversification.

Oil from Saudi Arabia remains strategically useful despite the country setting a new execution record in 2025.

Robin Brooks Discovers Boats

Brooks presents Greece’s resistance as proof that shipping oligarchs are corrupting European governance.

The Greek government is attempting to prevent sanctions from destroying a strategically important domestic company, devaluing specialised vessels, eliminating European expertise and handing an established market to foreign competitors.

This used to be called protecting a national industry.

It is understandable that Brussels now regards such behaviour as suspicious.

Germany has already demonstrated the correct European approach by shutting down its nuclear power plants, restricting coal, raising energy costs and allowing large parts of its industrial base to wander away.

That sacrifice was presented as responsibility, modernisation and leadership.

Greece should therefore abandon the outdated belief that a government exists to preserve employment, revenue and strategic capacity. European solidarity requires every member state to discover its own successful industry and place it gently on the altar of moral values, while American, Chinese and Japanese operators inherit the contracts.