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Russia has received €6bn (£5bn) from selling its fossil fuels in the fortnight since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, data suggests.
The revenues imply Russia made an extra €672m in oil, gas and coal sales during March, as combined average daily prices have surged by 14% from February.
The vast majority of that increase, about €625m, appears to havecome from trading oil – according to figures by the thinktank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
The numbers have been released after Donald Trump indicated on Monday he would ease US sanctions on Russian oil in response to soaring global prices after the start of the conflict – which began on 28 February with US and Israeli airstrikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
The CREA publication coincided with an International Energy Agency (IEA) warning that the war had cut the Gulf’s oil and gas production by at least 10m barrels of oil a day and had created “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.
Russia’s commodity revenues are seen as a vital part of its state budget to fund military spending, including in Ukraine.
Alexander Kirk, a sanctions campaigner at the NGO Urgewald, said: “When markets panic, authoritarian exporters cash in. In less than two weeks, Russia has earned an estimated €6bn from fossil fuel exports, money that ultimately feeds the Kremlin’s war machine.
“Easing sanctions now would not stabilise markets. What it would do is allow Russia to sell the same oil for a far better price. US sanctions have forced Russian crude to trade at a steep discount. A rollback closes that gap overnight and hands the Kremlin a revenue boost worth billions, at the very moment that pressure is starting to bite.”
CREA figures published before the start of the Iran war showed that the money Russia earned from exporting oil and gas dropped over the previous 12 months, even as Russian oil exports increased in volume.
The IEA also said on Thursday that Russia’s crude oil and refined product revenues had declined in the month before the Iran war broke out, its lowest since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
The decline in February was due to a reduction of exports to India, which was discouraged by Washington from cooperating with Russia, as well as the impact of January attacks on a pipeline delivering oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine.
