How Russia benefits from “the United States”

Russia is benefiting financially from the US-Israel war with Irananalysts tell News themezone, as retaliatory attacks by Tehran paralyze crude oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and send global energy prices soaring.

The US Treasury issued a 30-day waiver last week about sanctions imposed on Russian energy sales over continued large scale invasion of Ukraine. The exemption allows Russia to sell oil that was already loaded on tankers.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the waiver a “narrowly tailored short-term measure” to “promote stability in global energy markets” and insisted it would not “provide a significant financial benefit to the Russian government.”

Some analysts, and Russia, disagree.

Rising oil revenues are already “rapidly becoming a lifeline for Russia,” Luke Wickenden, a Europe-Russia energy and sanctions analyst at the Center for Energy and Clean Air Research (CERA), told News themezone on Tuesday.

“Russian crude oil was trading at a discount of around 10 to 20%” before the waiver eased U.S. sanctions, Wickenden said. “Now, that discount has completely disappeared and is practically at the same level as Brent crude,” which is widely considered the international benchmark for oil prices.

Wickenden told News themezone that Moscow’s increased revenue is due, at least in part, to the exemption that incentivizes buyers of Russian oil to increase their imports.

“These countries that previously may have been a little cautious about importing this crude oil, may actually increase their imports. So, for example, China’s imports have increased by 22% compared to last month. Brazil’s have increased by 32% and Singapore’s have almost tripled,” he said.

Further analysis by CERA shows that Russia’s average revenue from crude oil exports during the first two weeks of the Iran war was worth an estimated $230 million per day, 26% higher than the daily average in February, before the conflict.

The Kremlin has had no qualms about increasing its profits since the war began.

“We are talking about additional income for our oil companies, which sell oil and oil products and are guided by the current price environment,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday. “Company revenues mean higher budget revenues.”

Earlier this month, Bessent also announced a 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to buy Russian oil, a move he said was “allowing oil to continue flowing to the global market” amid the war in the Middle East.

That represented a policy change for the Trump administration, which last year imposed a 25% tariff on imports from India as a result of its large purchases of Russian oil. India is the second largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels, according to a CERA analysis.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that the Kremlin’s increased revenue could give Vladimir Putin “more confidence that he can continue the war” in Ukraine.

“Our intelligence reports that due to all the sanctions imposed by the United States and the EU, and due to our deep attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, Russia faced a deficit of more than $100 billion in 2026 alone,” Zelenskyy said. “Now we see that they have made about $10 billion in two weeks of war in the Middle East.”

Wickenden told News themezone that if the Iran war continues and keeps global energy prices elevated for two or three months, “it would actually offset the losses that it’s causing.” [Russia] done only in the last year.”

Asked by Sen. Mark Kelly on Wednesday whether Russia had made billions of dollars from rising oil prices and a pause in U.S. sanctions in the middle of the war, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard simply said “that’s what’s been reported,” then referred the question to the Treasury and Energy secretaries.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, at the same Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, said he was not an economist and therefore would not “try to make those calculations. But as I mentioned before, sometimes decisions are made that will benefit adversaries at the same time that policymakers think they will benefit the American people.”

However, Ian Bremmer, founder of global political risk research firm Eurasia Group, told News themezone on Tuesday that any financial benefit to Russia is unlikely to be a “game changer” for Moscow as it continues its war against Ukraine.

“A lot of Russians were dying, over a million casualties have taken in four years of war, but that wasn’t stopping Putin. So his willingness to take those consequences and his willingness to expose his own population to hardship, including economic hardship, has been very ardent,” Bremmer said.

Bremmer did say, however, that the boost to Russia’s state coffers will give the Kremlin greater financial “flexibility” as it fights its war, and that could become a sore point for the United States and its European allies.
“Given the fact that the Russians are a principled enemy of the United States and its allies around the world, the fact that America’s chosen war in Iran ends up directly helping the Russians, both directly and indirectly, as a consequence of the Trump administration’s decisions, that’s what I think has people out of shape,” he said.