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As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its fifth year, the biggest buyers of Russian fossil fuels continue to be dealt an easy hand, while India, which has contributed much less than China and the European Union (EU) to nearly a trillion dollars in Russian export revenues from fuels, has faced the stick, according to data from international forecasters and industry sources.
India’s purchases of fossil fuels from Russia were around half of what China paid and three fourths of what the EU contributed over the nearly four-year span of the conflict, industry data showed. However, US President Donald Trump slapped a 50 per cent tariff on Indian exports earlier this year, half of which was in retaliation for India buying Russian oil, and has refused to drop it despite Indian refiners slashing purchases in December. China pays lower import duties than India on exports to the US, while the EU pays a fraction, according to US government data.
The EU, which has introduced several sanctions and price caps on trade in Russian oil affecting Indian buyers, has contributed 22 per cent of Russia’s revenues from fossil fuel exports, second only to China, in the 46 months to December 25, 2025, according to calculations based on data from Finnish think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
“According to our estimates, since the beginning of the war, Russia earned 996 billion euros ($1.2 trillion) in revenue from fossil fuel exports,” CREA said in its latest data set. “European Union countries purchased more than 218 billion euros of these exports.” India and Turkey paid 162 billion euros and 117 billion euros, respectively, during the period, according to CREA.
Oil imports constituted 89 per cent of India’s total expenditure on Russian fuels, with coal making up the rest. Purchases may dwindle in 2026 after severe sanctions on Russian oil producers by Trump in October sent the share of Russian oil in India’s crude basket falling by 14 percentage points on the month to around 22 per cent in December, ship-tracking data accessed by Business Standard showed.
China is the biggest buyer of sanctioned oil in the world, importing fuels from countries sanctioned by the United Nations, such as Iran, and from Venezuela. It paid 292 billion euros for fossil fuels imported from Russia from the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to December 25, 2025, accounting for 29 per cent of Russia’s overall revenues from fuel exports since the start of the war.
Russia’s piped gas deliveries to China grew 25 per cent year-on-year in 2025 to a new all-time high of 38.8 billion cubic metres, now accounting for almost 9 per cent of China’s gas demand, said Greg Molnar, gas analyst at the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
These supplies came cheap, Molnar said. State-run China National Petroleum Corporation paid around $9.5 billion for Russia’s piped gas in 2025, translating into an average price of about $6.5 per million British thermal units, half of what India pays for imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — natural gas supercooled to liquid form for ease of transportation. This was also 45 per cent below the average European gas benchmark TTF price in 2025.
US biggest beneficiary
Ironically, Washington is the biggest beneficiary of the Russia-Ukraine war even after excluding earnings from arms sales to Ukraine. US fuel exporters gained hundreds of billions of dollars in fresh sales of LNG and fuels to Europe — a market that until 2021 was awash with cheaper pipeline gas from Russia — catapulting America into the position of the world’s biggest supplier of LNG.
After the EU drastically slashed supplies of Russian gas and later diesel following the invasion of Ukraine, it was forced to turn to the US for fuels, given the proximity and ease of shipments, industry officials said.
The US, which accounts today for around 25 per cent of global LNG supply, up from virtually zero in 2015, is Europe’s main supplier of LNG — and the most expensive one, said Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, lead energy analyst at IEEFA for Europe, in a LinkedIn post. European imports of US LNG rose 46 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2025. The US accounted for 57 per cent of the continent’s LNG imports, which paid around 225 billion euros for LNG imports in the three years between 2022 and 2024, including 100 billion euros for US LNG.
“This high amount is partly because US LNG is more expensive for EU buyers than LNG from any other supplier,” Jaller-Makarewicz said. The US Energy Agency forecasts the US gas benchmark Henry Hub to average $4 per million British thermal units next year.
Russian supplies
After evading the Western sanctions dragnet for more than three years, Russian supplies of crude oil to India slumped to 1.1 million barrels per day, the lowest since November 2022, according to ship-tracking data from Kpler. The sharp slide of around 700,000 barrels per day from November followed Washington’s October sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, the country’s two biggest oil producers, which registered a blip in the global Russian supply chain.
Reliance Industries, the single biggest buyer of Russian oil globally, sharply cut purchases by nearly half to 296,000 barrels per day, Kpler data showed. Two senior refining officials told Business Standard that it is too early to call the demise of Russian oil. Russia continued to be India’s top crude oil supplier this month as of December 28, ship-tracking data showed. Trump has repeatedly targeted Russia’s oil sales to Indian refiners, while letting the EU and China — the two biggest beneficiaries of discounted Russian commodity supplies — go scot-free.
Russian fossil fuel revenues from February 2022-Dec 25,2025
Source Centre for Research on Energy & Clean Air
Units in billion euros
Russian supplies of crude oil in December
| Oil | Gas | Coal | Total | |
| China | 209 | 42.5 | 41 | 292 |
| European Union | 106 | 108 | 3.5 | 218 |
| India | 143 | Nil | 18 | 161 |
| Turkey | 77 | 30 | 12 | 119 |
| Russian total revenues | NA | NA | NA | 996 |
| Dec-24 | Nov-25 |
Dec 2025* |
