LONDON — Ukrainian campaigners have demanded Keir Starmer’s government cancel all procurement contracts with suppliers that maintain links to Russian fossil fuels.

Their call — set out Wednesday in a letter to Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds — comes after POLITICO revealed No. 10 Downing St., and many other Whitehall buildings, are supplied with gas by TotalEnergies Gas & Power, a U.K. subsidiary of French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies still imports Russian gas to the U.K.’s European neighbors.

The government’s contract with the firm, potentially worth up to £8 billion, “undermines the U.K.’s public commitment to ending dependence on Putin’s bloody oil and gas,” the campaign groups wrote.

“It sets an example which profiteering companies have been only too happy to follow,” the letter said. “This in turn has undermined the entire Western sanctions regime.”

The Cabinet Office did not reply to a request for comment in time for publication of this article.

The campaigners’ letter is signed by seven Ukraine-based and pro-Ukrainian groups. It calls on Thomas-Symonds — the minister with oversight of the government’s procurement body, Crown Commercial Service — to disclose all Whitehall contracts with TotalEnergies, commit to ending procurement from suppliers that maintain Russian energy ties, and set out a “clear plan for transitioning government departments to clean, conflict-free energy sources.”

Iryna Ptashnyk, a senior researcher at Razom We Stand, the Ukrainian campaign group that coordinated the letter, said it was “indefensible” that British taxpayers’ money is flowing to TotalEnergies. “The U.K. government must urgently show leadership [and] end these contracts,” she said.

TotalEnergies says it only supplies Russian gas to Europe from the Yamal liquefied natural gas complex in Siberia under long-term contractual arrangements, which predate Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and which it cannot break.

Gas supplied under TotalEnergies Gas & Power’s contracts with the U.K. government is procured on the domestic market, so it is highly unlikely any of it originated in Russia. In line with the U.K.’s ban, the company does not import Russian LNG directly to the U.K.

But campaigners and Labour members of parliament have said the government’s deal with the firm — secured in 2023 under the Conservative government — undermines the U.K.’s otherwise hard-line stance on Russia’s fossil fuel trade, which the Kremlin uses to finance its war against Ukraine.  

The Bank of England and — beyond the capital — local council offices, NHS hospitals and schools likewise buy gas from TotalEnergies Gas & Power, via the CCS contract and other lucrative public sector procurement deals.

Stephen Hoffman, deputy director of UK Friends of Ukraine, said that British government buildings “should not be heated with gas that comes from a company with such deep ties to Russia’s fossil fuel industry.”