Hydrocarbons from the Termokarstovoye gas field in Siberia are transformed into jet fuel, which can ultimately be tracked to two military airbases near the Ukrainian border, the journalists wrote.
Squadrons based there have been accused by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of attacks on civilians, including the March 16 bombing of a Mariupol theatre where hundreds of people are believed to have died in what Amnesty described as a "war crime".
TotalEnergies -- formerly Total -- owns 49 percent of Terneftegaz, the company that extracts gas from the Termokarstovoye field, according to its 2021 annual report.
The other 51 percent is held by Russian company Novatek, in which the French firm also holds a 19.4 percent stake.
Le Monde wrote that natural gas condensates -- a liquid hydrocarbon recovered when extracting the gas itself -- are sent by pipeline for processing at a Novatek plant in Purovsky.
They are then sent by rail for further refining into jet fuel in the southern Siberian city of Omsk.
Since early 2022 shipments from there have reached airbases near the Ukrainian border, the newspaper reported, citing data from financial information firm Refinitiv -- the first such deliveries since 2017.
Beginning days before the war started in late February and through July, 42,700 tonnes of fuel were sent to the airbases at Morozovsk and Malshevo, the data showed.
That was "enough to fill 3,400 Sukhoi Su-34 fuel tanks," the investigative nonprofit Global Witness wrote on its website, referring to a particular model of Russian fighter-bomber.
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