An embargo which does not seem to have asphyxiated Moscow. Russia earned 158 billion euros in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first six months of the war in Ukraine. This is the main observation made by experts from the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in a report published on Tuesday 6 September (link in english).
In the first trimester, theEuropean Union imported nearly 85 billion euros of Russian fossil fuels, making the EU-27 the largest importers, followed by China (34.9 billion euros), Turkey (10.7 billion euros), India (6.6 billion euros), Japan (2.5 billion euros), Egypt (2.3 billion euros, and South Korea ( 2 billion euros).
Among the countries of the European Union, Germany occupies first place, ahead of the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, France (5.5 billion euros), Bulgaria, Belgium and Spain.
Also according to this same report, fossil fuel exports have contributed nearly 43 billion euros to the Russian federal budget since the beginning of the invasion, thus helping “to finance war crimes in Ukraine”, experts say.
Moscow’s export earnings “increased slightly” this summer due to a rebound in crude oil and “only a small fraction of the future impact of the European Union embargo on Russian oil has been realised.”
Finally, after the EU coal ban came into force in mid-August, Russia failed to find other buyers to replace the drop in demand from the EU27, add the experts in their report.