The Belgian Prime Minister, Bart De Wever, has been placed in the eye of the hurricane after complaining last weekend to the UEuropean Union to “normalize” its relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to access again “cheap energy” in the midst of the crisis due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the escalation of the price of gas and oil.
The Flemish nationalist leader and “friend” of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, considered in Brussels as the main brake on the Twenty-seven from further tightening their economic fight with Moscownow faces an avalanche of reproaches from both its internal coalition partners and community officials, who They accuse him of feeding the Kremlin’s narrative and weakening European unity in the middle of the Ukrainian war.
In an interview with the economic newspaper LitterDe Wever appealed to “common sense” to justify the reopening of the Russian energy tap, by maintaining that Europe must “reach an agreement” with Putin if it wants to contain the energy bill, although he clarified that it is not about being “naive” with Moscow.
“Privately, European leaders agree with mebut no one dares to say it out loud,” the flamenco leader, whom the magazine Politico already portrayed as “the most valuable asset” of the Kremlin for its resistance to using frozen Russian assets in the EU as collateral for a 140 billion euro macroloan for Ukraine.
The words of the Belgian head of government have caused a political fire in Belgium, where partners of his coalition such as the Flemish Socialists and the Christian Democrats have reminded him that vBuying gas from Russia again would mean, de facto, financing the war machine that supports the invasion of Ukraine.
“Buying more gas from Putin will only give Russia more money to continue its war,” the party warned. Christian Democrat and Flamencowhile socialist leader Conner Rousseau stressed that the federal government has never agreed to “go begging Putin for cheap energy.”
The European Commissioner for Energy, Dan Jorgensenwas in charge, for his part, of reminding him that the Twenty-Seven had made the decision to stop importing Russian energy. “Before Christmas we turned it into law,” said the Danish social democrat.
It would be a mistake to repeat what we did in the past. In the future we will not import a single molecule from Russia,” he said.
Faced with these criticisms, the Belgian Foreign Minister, Maxime Prévot, has been forced to leave to try to contain the diplomatic damage, marking a “crucial distinction” between maintaining dialogue channels with Russia and the “normalization” of relations which, to this day, continue to be marked by sanctions and by European rejection of the Kremlin’s “maximalist demands.”
Prévot insisted that Belgium maintains “unalterable” its support for Ukraine, He assured that the prime minister has not asked for sanctions relief and stressed that an eventual peace agreement is a precondition for rethinking the current framework.
The criticisms of De Wever are framed in the context of the pulse that De Wever himself has been maintaining for months with his European partners regarding the use of the more than 200,000 million in Russian assets frozen in Europa, largely deposited in Belgium.
The prime minister has threatened to block plans to use these funds as a financial guarantee for kyiv if the risks for the Belgian State are not shielded to the maximum, a tightening of conditions that, according to various capitals, is delaying the economic response to the war conflict.
His friendship with Puigdemont
The debate on this approach to Russia comes accompanied by the shadow of Catalonia, where the ‘RusiaGate‘ has once again gained political prominence in the heat of De Wever’s maneuvers.
The Belgian Prime Minister is not only the leader who heads the federal government today, but also the old ally of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, to whom he has been providing political and logistical support for years since the N-VA, the Flemish nationalist party that has been one of the main international supporters of the Junts leader.
“Carles Puigdemont is a friend and friends are always welcome”declared De Wever in 2017, then mayor of Antwerp, when the former Catalan president arrived in Belgium fleeing Spanish justice after the illegal 1-O referendum and the failed declaration of independence.
Bart de Wever and Carles Puigdemont at the presentation of a book in 2018.
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Since then, the current prime minister has not only defended Puigdemont in public, he has supported him in events such as in 2018 at the presentation of his book The Catalan crisis in Antwerp and has made the N-VA one of its pillars in the European Parliament, but also has contributed to consolidating the Belgian refuge of the Catalan independence movement.
Puigdemont, for his part, has publicly thanked De Wever and the N-VA for their support since 2017, highlighting their role in offering him a friendly political environment in Belgium.
When De Wever was sworn in as prime minister in February 2025, Puigdemont celebrated his arrival to power and wrote that “your voice is very necessary in the European Council”, in a congratulatory message where he reinforced that political closeness.
The ‘RussiaGate’
De Wever’s turn toward a hypothetical “normalization” with Moscow It also revives suspicions about the contacts between Puigdemont’s entourage and Russia investigated by the Spanish Justice.
The callRusiaGate Catalan focuses on the figure of Josep Lluís Alay, historian and photographer, responsible for the former president’s office abroad and considered the Puigdemont’s main link in Moscowwho traveled to the Russian capital in 2019 to meet with former officials and people linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence services, according to documents from the Volhov case and revelations of New York Times.
According to these investigations, Puigdemont’s office financed at least one of Alay’s trips to Russia, where heopened polled support for the Catalan independence movementan extreme that both he and the former president himself deny, alleging that these were “regular” contacts with foreign authorities and journalists.
However, the reports of the judicial case frame these movements in the Kremlin’s strategy of forging ties with secessionist and Eurosceptic forces to destabilize European politics, a pattern that analysts now see reinforced by the coincidence between De Wever’s positions on Russia and his political ties with Puigdemont.
In Brussels, European diplomats maintain that the combination of factors—a prime minister of a key country for Russian assets, a defender of a softer line with Moscow, and at the same time a historical ally of the Catalan independence movement splashed by RussiaGate—draws a “explosive” scenario for the credibility of EU foreign policy.
However, De Wever is victimized by the “dimension” that, in his opinion, has been given to his words, but the political earthquake that has unleashed in Belgium and European capitals is far from subsiding.
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