EU countries have imported more than €100bn worth of coal, oil and gas from Russia since the invasion of Ukraine in February, as part of the bloc’s higher overall consumption of fossil fuels so far in 2022, an independent Helsinki-based research group has estimated.

While Europe continued to pay as much to Russia for gas as it did in the first half of 2021 due to skyrocketing prices, it received a fraction of the gas, said the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea).

But the bloc’s estimated overall 11 per cent drop in total gas consumption in the first half of the year was counterbalanced by an increase in the use of oil products by 8 per cent, hard coal by 7 per cent, and lignite by 12 per cent, based on data from the Eurostat government agency.