Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia had earned $10 billion in two weeks of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
That’s about 10% of what Moscow has lost in the oil trade so far this year, he said in a post on X.
Zelenskyy wrote that Ukrainian intelligence reports indicated that global oil sanctions and Kyiv’s strikes on Russian energy infrastructure had pushed Moscow’s deficit for 2026 to over $100 billion.
“Now we see they have made around 10 billion over two weeks of the war in the Middle East,” Zelenskyy wrote. “This is really dangerous. It gives Putin more confidence that he can continue the war.”
“The situation around Iran brings him more money,” Zelenskyy added of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
His remarks come as oil prices skyrocketed in the weeks after the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28. Both have heavily bombed Iran’s oil infrastructure, which produces crude primarily for Asian markets, while Tehran’s retaliatory strikes have also damaged energy facilities in the Middle East.
More critically, Tehran is effectively stalling traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for about a fifth of the world’s oil, with a string of attacks on commercial ships plying the waterway.
Russia, meanwhile, stands to gain from rising oil prices as one of the world’s largest exporters, though its dominance has been partially stymied by Western sanctions to punish and inhibit its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Trump administration also announced on Friday that it was temporarily easing those sanctions to relieve the global oil supply, allowing trade of Russian crude for roughly four weeks.
In his post, Zelenskyy also warned that easing sanctions would be “helpful” to Putin.
Oil and gas are crucial pillars of the Russian economy, even as it faces global sanctions, and much of the government’s revenue comes from taxing these industries.
In January and February, for example, Moscow said it earned about $$10.2 billion in both months from oil and gas revenue, down 47% year-on-year when accounting for currency swings. Its total revenues for the same period were about $58.7 billion, its finance ministry said.
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