The winner nobody is watching
Three months of war in the Gulf have trained every trader's eye on the Strait of Hormuz. The country quietly walking off with the spoils sits well to the north. Russia, frozen out of Western markets since its invasion of Ukraine, has spent this crisis selling every barrel it can float, and charging a lot more for each one.
The numbers are stark. The International Energy Agency says Russia pulled in $19.18 billion of oil-export revenue in April, about $6.28 billion more than a year before. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which tracks Moscow's shipments cargo by cargo, pegged total fossil-fuel export earnings at €733 million a day that month, the most in two and a half years, even as the volume leaving Russian ports slipped 7%.
Higher prices are doing the work
That gap between fewer barrels and more money is the whole story. Russian crude has climbed about 80% since January to near $90 a barrel, leaving the $60 ceiling the G7 set in 2022 looking like a relic. At the peak of the war's price spike, Urals briefly fetched roughly $110, its strongest level since 2013. Western shipowners who once moved Russian oil under the cap have stepped back now that the grade trades above it, handing the business to a murkier fleet.
Asia cannot buy it fast enough
The reason comes down to geography. With Iran's blockade choking the roughly one-fifth of the world's oil that normally passes through Hormuz, the first tankers are only now trickling back through the strait, and Asia's refiners needed crude from somewhere. Russia was the one big seller with cargoes to spare.
India leaned in hardest. Russian barrels made up 47% of its crude imports in March, about 2.14 million a day, almost twice the share it took in February. China, already Moscow's biggest customer, booked 41% of Russia's earnings among its top five buyers in April, with crude alone worth €5.5 billion. Between them, the two giants now absorb three-quarters or more of everything Russia ships. By April they were effectively bidding against each other, each taking close to 1.6 million barrels a day.
The buyers' club keeps growing. Malaysia started sounding out Russian suppliers in April, and Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto traveled to Moscow on April 13 to talk energy with Vladimir Putin in person.
The discount has quietly vanished
For three years the trade-off with Russian oil was the steep markdown buyers demanded for the political risk. That cushion is gone. Urals delivered to India has jumped about 70% since late February, to near $100 a barrel. Analysts say India is now too dependent to walk away easily, which means the deep discounts of the sanctions era may not return for a long while.
Moscow has had help, too. After a March 10 phone call with Putin, President Trump said the US would suspend its Russian-oil sanctions for "some countries" to relieve the global shortage, a quiet green light that kept barrels moving. The EU is separately weighing whether to freeze its own price cap rather than keep watching the market ignore it. Russia's shadow fleet of tankers carried a record 54% of its fossil-fuel exports in April, the most yet.
A win that outlasts the war
The irony is that the fighting is cooling just as Russia closes the books on a banner quarter. Crude has shed more than 16% in May as traders bet on a ceasefire and a reopening of Hormuz, and WTI slipped below $90 after the latest US strikes were read as pressure for a deal. More Gulf supply would likely drag prices lower still.
Yet the ground Russia gained is not only about price. New customers, deeper reliance in New Delhi and Beijing, and a refilled treasury do not unwind the day the war ends. Russia even cut its own production and export forecasts for 2026 through 2029, yet still out-earned the prior year, proof the windfall was about what each barrel fetched rather than how many it moved.
The real test comes when Middle East crude floods back. If Gulf producers undercut Urals again, Russia's discount could widen and Asian buyers could drift toward cheaper grades. For one strange wartime quarter, though, the most heavily sanctioned major exporter on the planet held the strongest hand at the table.