America Funded Russia’s War Machine for Cheaper Gas

By Nova Ukraine CEO Ambassador Erin E. McKee

In February, Ukrainian forces gained more ground against Russia than they lost for the first time in more than two years. On the battlefield, there was optimism that momentum was finally swinging against Russia four years after Moscow’s unprovoked full-scale invasion.

By the end of March, however, Ukrainians were bombarded by nearly 1,000 attack drones in a period of less than 24 hours in a brazen daytime assault that wreaked havoc across the country, killing several civilians, wounding dozens, and sending millions into shelters.

What happened in between? When prices increased at American gas pumps as a result of U.S. military action in Iran, the U.S. lifted sanctions on Russian oil at sea, replenishing Moscow’s war chest to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in oil sales that would have been impossible if the sanctions were still in place.

Russia likely converted that revenue into missiles, artillery, and drones—weapons deployed daily against Ukrainian civilians. More perversely, it supplied Iran with Shahed attack drones, funneling weapons directly to the very regime Washington is simultaneously trying to confront. The United States, in effect, funded both sides of its own conflict.

Fortunately, the U.S. did not extend the 30-day sanctions exemption after it expired on April 11, but a great deal of damage had already been done.  

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the waiver allowing countries to purchase Russian oil at sea without fear of sanctions a “deliberately short-term measure [that] will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government.” However, a report in the Guardian using data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that Moscow earned $7 billion from the sale of fossil fuels at the beginning of March, including an extra $780 million in oil, gas, and coal sales as prices have surged by 14 percent since February.

“It spends the money from energy sales on weapons, and all of this is then used against us,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the sanctions were lifted.

Hopes Fade for Spring after Deadly Winter

Ukrainians had endured a savage winter—temperatures well below zero, cities stripped of heat, electricity, and water for weeks at a time. Russia did not do this by accident. The Kremlin deliberately timed its most devastating strikes for the coldest months, systematically destroying energy infrastructure to freeze civilians into submission. Millions suffered not as collateral damage, but as the intended target. Spring had offered a moment of hope. That hope is now under assault too.

As Yale historian Timothy Snyder notes, “It is Russian policy to deprive Ukrainians of light, heat, and water during the winter by destroying civilian infrastructure.”

“This deliberate creation of misery and lethal conditions for civilians is contrary to the laws of war. It is also another violation of the genocide convention, which forbids ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’ That this is indeed the intention is gleefully affirmed practically every day on Russian state television,” he says.

The escalation is not anecdotal—it is documented. Nova Stash, Nova Ukraine’s volunteer rapid-response program operating across nine cities, deployed to strike sites 70 times in the final quarter of 2025, compared to just 26 times in the first quarter. That is nearly a threefold increase in a single year. And those numbers almost certainly undercount the reality: our civilian volunteers cannot enter the most dangerous areas until emergency responders have cleared them. The UN group monitoring human rights in Ukraine says civilian deaths from long-range weapons increased 27 percent this winter over the previous year.

Russia Targets Humanitarian Sites

I felt the so-called “Russian desire for peace” first-hand during my visit to Ukraine in November, when a Russian missile destroyed a Nova Ukraine warehouse in Lviv filled with medical equipment. It was one of the year’s largest and deadliest attacks – Russia launched 476 drones and 48 missiles across Ukraine, killing 36 civilians, including three children.

My first reaction was relief that none of our staff were harmed. Then came something harder to name. I spent the previous night in a Kyiv bunker for four hours while the attack unfolded overhead. When I heard the news of the destruction, I felt it in my bones and in my soul: the fear and anger that comes from being a victim of terror. I was in Ukraine for only a few days. Ukrainians live with this every single day.

The day after the attack, I walked through the charred skeleton of the medical warehouse, a facility I oversee as CEO of Nova Ukraine, one of the largest U.S. nonprofits supporting Ukraine. The building was reduced to twisted metal and ash. Inside were obliterated ultrasound machines, surgical instruments, and supplies destined for more than 600 hospitals across Ukraine, all purchased by generous American donors. Gone.

The destruction of our warehouse was not collateral damage. It was no accident. Russia has also struck the UN World Food Programme warehouse in Dnipro, and humanitarian warehouses in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and dozens of other places. 

Perseverance Will Pay Off

Just like with the attacks on the energy infrastructure, the assaults on humanitarian supplies have one goal: to break Ukraine’s will.

But Putin miscalculated. Within hours of the strike on our warehouse, three replacement containers were already in transit. We are rerouting, restocking, and not stopping.

That determination mirrors the people we serve. Every Ukrainian I meet carries immense weight with quiet dignity—not asking for pity, not asking for charity, asking only that the world not actively finance their destruction. Keeping sanctions in place is not generosity. It is the bare minimum.