Norway urged to step up Ukraine support after profiting from war
Norwegian academics, rights campaigners, bestselling authors and a former minister have urged Oslo to increase its support for Ukraine, saying the government must do more to help after earning billions in extra oil and gas revenue from Russia’s war.
In a letter published in the VG tabloid, signatories including the former foreign minister Knut Vollebæk, the anthropologist Erika Fatland and Henrik Urdal of the Oslo Peace Research Institute said Norway was “the only country in Europe” to be profiting from the war.
The wealthy Scandinavian country’s oil and gas revenues have soared to record levels over the past 12 months as energy prices tripled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Norway replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas.
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Compared with original estimates, Oslo’s state budget projected an additional €180bn (£160bn) in oil and gas income for 2022 and 2023, the signatories wrote, adding that the government’s public pledges of support for Ukraine over the same period amounted to just €1.27bn.
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, has dismissed any suggestion that the country was profiteering from the war. “It’s a notion I flatly refuse”, Støre told AFP on Tuesday, adding that a major “multi-year support package” would be announced in the coming days.
The letter acknowledged more humanitarian and military support would be coming and the value of arms supplies, in particular, was hard to calculate, but said: “Either way, Norway can afford to contribute more to Ukraine than we are doing. Far more.”
Ukrainian cities and infrastructure were being reduced to rubble, the signatories wrote. “We have a duty to help Ukraine stand up to a superior military power and limit the humanitarian catastrophe.”
Norway “is contributing, but our contribution is not proportional to our unique capabilities”, they said. “It is time for Norway to use part of its accumulating wealth for the benefit of a country in desperate need of our support.”
Norway manages its immense wealth “with future generations in mind”, the letter said, but the same “has to be true also of international rule of law. It, too, must be managed and kept for our descendants. Ukraine’s struggle is our struggle”.
Oslo can “choose to contribute to Ukraine’s struggle at a level that corresponds to our capabilities”, it said. “Or we can turn away and trick ourselves into believing that some help, gradually, is all that’s within our power. If we make that choice, we are not only failing Ukraine. We are also failing ourselves.”
Sven Holtsmark, of the Norwegian Defence Academy, who initiated the letter, said that by international standards Norway was “certainly among the better donors” to Ukraine, but the fact that it was “not doing badly comparatively” was besides the point.
“This country has received enormous additional income, a huge windfall, because of Russia’s invasion,” the history professor, said. “We are in an absolutely unique position, and we should be giving much, much more.”
Støre denied Oslo was turning the war to its financial advantage, even involuntarily. “Norway has for 50 years been an explorer, at some risk, and seller of energy resources, oil and gas”, he said. “Norway does not fix the prices.”
He said a higher gas price had also led to soaring electricity bills for Norwegian families and companies, which was “politically a big challenge for us” in a country that relied heavily on electricity for industry, heating and transport.
