The war on Ukraine is brutal and terrifying. A nation with nearly six thousand nuclear weapons has launched a deadly war on a neighboring state. Hundreds have died.
One key thing to know about the atrocities playing out right now: they are being bankrolled by fossil fuel profits. Between forty and fifty percent of the Russian government’s budget comes from the oil and gas it sells to the rest of the world, including the United States.
Gazprom, the world’s largest producer of gas, is a majority Russian state-owned fossil fuel company that makes an incredible amount of money for the Kremlin. But Gazprom does more than help fund Russia’s war machine. Since 2009, it has used its supply of fossil fuels as a bludgeon to threaten Ukraine, cutting off the country’s supply of gas on numerous occasions.
And you know who is funding Gazprom? JPMorgan Chase.
Since 2016, Chase has led more lending and underwriting to Gazprom than any other bank in the world. In 2014, Chase underwrote $700 billion in bonds for Gazprom, even when no other US bank would touch the deal.
Not only is Gazprom helping to fund Russia’s war machine, but it has a business model that is betting on catastrophic climate change ― Gazprom is spending billions every year on massively expanding its oil and gas operations.
It’s horrific to watch the tragic scenes playing out in Ukraine. Bombings of civilian apartment buildings. The deaths of innocent children. One million people forced to flee the country.
The awful anti-Black racism playing out at the border and the racism that South-Asian students and workers have been facing as they attempt to flee the country is harrowing. Other countries should be accepting innocent people fleeing from Ukraine, no matter their skin color or nationality.
Funded by oil and gas profits, the war on Ukraine is also yet another example of how fossil fuel production is linked to authoritarianism, violence, and war around the globe. Deadly wars in Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, and Syria have all had fossil fuels at their heart. And, of course, the United States has fought its own illegal wars in the name of oil ― the Iraq War resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people.
Dozens of major corporations have already pulled back from Russia after its criminal and deadly invasion of Ukraine. It’s time that JPMorgan Chase did, too.
In Solidarity
– the Stop the Money Pipeline team
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