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 (in English) released Tuesday, September 6.
In the first trimester, theEuropean Union imported nearly 85 billion euros worth of Russian fossil fuels, making the EU27 Russia’s largest customers, 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 Korea of the South (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.
According to the same report, fossil fuel exports have therefore contributed nearly 43 billion euros to the Russian federal budget since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, thus helping “to finance war crimes”, 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 realized.”
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.