Pricey oil and sanctions relief mean smiles in Moscow.
Foreign Policy
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Pricey oil and sanctions relief mean smiles in Moscow.
By Keith Johnson, a staff writer at Foreign Policy covering geoeconomics and energy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part via videoconference from Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part via videoconference from Moscow on March 27. Gavriil Grigorov / Pool / AFP
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April 21, 2026, 12:31 PM
While U.S. President Donald Trump struggles to find closure in his war of choice in Iran, Ukraine and the rest of the world are still grappling with the fallout of a different, unwanted war. The problem is that Trump’s war with Iran, which drove global oil prices sky-high, has let Russia make bank to the tune of billions of dollars a month.
Moscow’s earnings from fossil fuel exports in March reached a two-year high, with income of 713 million euros a day and tax receipts of 7.4 billion euros for the month, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finland-based independent research organization that has tracked Russian energy revenues meticulously since that war began.
While U.S. President Donald Trump struggles to find closure in his war of choice in Iran, Ukraine and the rest of the world are still grappling with the fallout of a different, unwanted war. The problem is that Trump’s war with Iran, which drove global oil prices sky-high, has let Russia make bank to the tune of billions of dollars a month.
Moscow’s earnings from fossil fuel exports in March reached a two-year high, with income of 713 million euros a day and tax receipts of 7.4 billion euros for the month, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finland-based independent research organization that has tracked Russian energy revenues meticulously since that war began.
That windfall has a godfather: Trump himself. Despite two years of increasingly stringent Western sanctions on Russian energy exports and tankers—a sanctions garrote that had come close to causing fiscal arteriosclerosis earlier this year—the Iran war has been a godsend to Russia’s energy sector. Global oil prices have jumped more than 50 percent since the Iran war began, which is good for Russia; but even more important, the discount that Russia’s Urals crude normally trades at on global markets has evaporated.
Additionally, Trump for two months in a row has eased sanctions on Russian energy exports in order to keep oil markets from blowing a gasket. The upshot is that the Kremlin is exporting a little bit more oil, and making a whole lot more money. Volumes in March were up 16 percent and seaborne crude revenues were up 115 percent, according to CREA.
“Russia is making a huge amount of money off the Iran war,” said Isaac Levi, the head of Russia research at CREA. “Everything is looking great for the Russians right now, though it all depends on Trump’s mood.”
In week eight of Trump’s four- to five-week war, the progress of talks in Pakistan remains in doubt. It’s possible the two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran will expire on April 22. What matters for oil markets, and Russia, and people who buy gasoline or diesel, is what Trump says on social media. The benchmark price of crude oil has oscillated between the upper $80s a barrel and the upper $110s since the war began on Feb. 28.
Ukraine has done what it can to mitigate Trump’s favor to Russia. Since the Iran war began, Kyiv has intensified what was already a sustained drone and missile offensive against Russian oil installations. In the last couple of months, Ukraine has rained fire upon Moscow’s Baltic oil-export entrepôts, with particular damage in Primorsk and Ust-Luga. On Monday, the Tuapse oil refinery on the Black Sea went up in flames.
Russian oil flows out of the Baltic and Black seas, which account for three-quarters of everything it ships by sea, are down by half in the last month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskytouts $2 billion in damage to Russian oil facilities in recent weeks. It is not enough.
“The skyrocketing prices and the sanctions waivers are outweighing whatever Ukraine does,” Levi said.
The reason all this matters is because regardless of what happens with the diplomatic track in Islamabad, the aftershocks of the largest energy crisis in history will last for months, at least. The combination of production stoppages among big oil producers such as Iraq and Kuwait with hundreds of stranded oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and an uncertain outlet through the Strait of Hormuz was already bad for oil markets.
Add to that repeated U.S. sanctions waivers, which allowed Russian oil to flow freely to China and India, and there is a recipe for an oil-fueled revival of the Kremlin’s war machine. Trump’s shot of oxygen may not be enough to entirely revive the Russian economy, but it is sorely needed and warmly welcomed in Moscow.
“We will see it in April. They will get even more revenue compared to March,” said Petras Katinas, formerly of CREA and now a nonresident fellow at the Kyiv School of Economics.
“It’s definitely an early celebration, if not an early Christmas, for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. Even if the Gulf crisis passes, it will take time. We might end up funding Putin throughout the war.”
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage. Read more here.
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Keith Johnson is a staff writer at Foreign Policy covering geoeconomics and energy. Bluesky: @kfj-fp.bsky.social X: @KFJ_FP
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