ANALYSIS: Russia Is Now Paying India to Refine Its Own Oil — August’s Figures Contradict Putin

The Statement and the Figures

What Putin Said in Vladivostok

At the Vladivostok Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin claimed that it was more profitable for Russia to export crude oil than to refine it domestically, in what appeared to be an attempt to downplay the fuel crisis his country is facing.

A report published by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a think tank based in Finland, says exactly the opposite. In August 2026, Russian hydrocarbon exports fell by 7% compared to July, and the resulting revenues dropped by 8%.

In other words, Russia has not made up for the refining capacity it lost due to Ukrainian strikes by selling more crude oil.

Details of the Decline

Russian export revenues fell to 604 million euros per day—approximately 700 million U.S. dollars—amounting to some 21.7 billion dollars for the full month. Specifically: crude oil export revenues dropped by 9%, to 350 million euros per day, with volumes down 11%. Revenues from pipeline gas, meanwhile, rose by 25% to 68 million euros per day—a real increase, but too small to make up for the losses.

And here is the key figure from the report: revenue from maritime exports of refined petroleum products plummeted by 32% in one month, falling to 78 million euros per day—the lowest level since the start of the full-scale invasion. Volumes declined by 21%.

One-third of the revenue from refined products wiped out in thirty days. This isn’t a market fluctuation; it’s a ceiling coming crashing down.

Ports that are no longer loading

Three Consecutive Months of Decline

The CREA notes that shipments of petroleum products from Russian ports have been declining for three consecutive months. In August 2026, shipment volumes were less than half of those recorded in August 2025.

Two ports illustrate this trend. Tuapse, on the Black Sea, has not loaded a single shipment of petroleum products for the third consecutive month. In Novorossiysk—the largest terminal on Russia’s Black Sea coast—crude oil shipments ceased for nine consecutive days, the longest interruption recorded since the start of the invasion.

According to the report, Ukrainian strikes on the terminals at Tuapse and Sheskharis in Novorossiysk were the direct cause.

The same port where a frigate burned this week had already stopped shipping oil for nine days.

Imports, or Industrial Humiliation

Three times the imports for all of 2025, in a single month

The most striking fact in the report is contained in a single line. In August, Russia imported 172,000 metric tons of petroleum products by sea—three times its total imports for the entire year of 2025, in a single month.

CREA notes that this figure is significantly lower than the 270,000 metric tons of maritime shipments from Asian countries reported by Reuters in late August, illustrating the uncertainty of the figures. But the direction is clear.

The world’s second-largest oil exporter is buying gasoline from abroad. There’s no other way to put it.

The Absurd Circle

And here is the detail that sums up the situation all on its own, noted by CREA itself. India supplies 70% of Russia’s petroleum product imports, 94% of which is gasoline. Yet India also refines Russian crude. The report’s conclusion: Russia is paying a refinery in which it holds a stake to process its own crude into fuel that it can no longer produce domestically.

Added to this are Egypt, which delivered 25,000 metric tons of diesel worth 16 million euros, and South Korea, with 18,000 metric tons of primarily diesel fuel.

Shipping its oil 6,000 kilometers only to have it returned as gasoline: that is the most honest summary of four years of economic warfare.

The Scale of the Shortage

Six hundred thousand metric tons missing

It is possible to estimate the actual shortfall by cross-referencing sources. According to Reuters, summer gasoline consumption in Russia hovers around 115,000 metric tons per day, or about 3.6 million metric tons per month. At the end of August, domestic production was likely between 80,000 and 90,000 metric tons per day, or about 70% of consumption.

Using the most favorable estimates—including the 220,000 metric tons of imported gasoline that arrived in Russia during August, according to Reuters, with 136,000 metric tons coming from Belarus—Russia would reach approximately three million metric tons for the month. This would leave a shortfall of some 600,000 metric tons.

A monthly gasoline shortfall of six hundred thousand metric tons cannot be resolved with a speech in Vladivostok.

The Dodged Question

This likely explains why, when asked in Vladivostok about the likely duration of the fuel crisis, Putin sidestepped the question by responding that Russians must be prepared for anything. A few days earlier, he had publicly acknowledged that his country had been mistaken and had failed to anticipate the Ukrainian strikes against its refineries.

The two statements contradict each other just a few days apart: one cannot simultaneously claim that it is more profitable to export crude oil and admit that one was caught off guard by the destruction of one’s refineries.

When a leader contradicts himself within a week, it’s no longer a matter of communication. It’s a two-step admission.

What This Means

The most effective sanction was never passed

We must draw the conclusion that bothers both sides. Since 2022, the West has adopted successive rounds of sanctions, negotiated for months, diluted by national exemptions, and circumvented by a “ghost fleet” of several hundred ships. Their impact on Russian revenues has been real but slow.

In three months, a Ukrainian drone campaign drove revenues from refined maritime products to their lowest level of the war, forced the world’s largest crude oil exporter to import its own gasoline, and prompted the Russian president to publicly admit to a strategic error.

The pressure that worked did not come from foreign ministries. It came from drones costing a few tens of thousands of dollars each.

The Need for Caution

A word of caution is in order, however. An economy does not collapse because of a single bad month, and since 2022, Russia has demonstrated a capacity to adapt that many had underestimated: a pivot toward Asia, a ghost fleet, opaque accounting, and industrial mobilization. The state’s reserves remain substantial, and revenues from pipeline gas are on the rise.

Fuel is not the regime. But a country that rations gasoline at its airports while waging a war of aggression a thousand kilometers away has just entered a zone where all choices become bad ones.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist September 12, 2026

Columnist’s Transparency Box

Editorial Stance

I am not a journalist, but a columnist and analyst. My job is to dissect geopolitical and strategic dynamics and offer a critical interpretation of events. I do not claim the cold objectivity of news reporting; I claim analytical clarity.

Methodology and Sources

The figures in this article are drawn from the monthly analysis by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an independent research organization based in Finland that has specialized in tracking Russian hydrocarbon exports since 2022. Its methods rely on tracking maritime traffic, customs data, and market prices; these are estimates, not official Russian figures, which Moscow has stopped publishing in detail.

Discrepancies between sources are reported rather than concealed: CREA reports 172,000 metric tons of petroleum products imported by sea in August, while Reuters cites 270,000 metric tons from Asia and 220,000 metric tons of gasoline from all sources combined. Such discrepancies are normal in a context where trade flows are deliberately obscured.

Nature of the Analysis

The calculation of the deficit of approximately 600,000 metric tons is based on a cross-referencing of estimates from Reuters and the CREA conducted by the Kyiv Post and reproduced here: this is an order of magnitude, not a precise measurement. The comparison between the effectiveness of Western sanctions and that of the airstrike campaign is the author’s judgment. The final caution regarding the Russian economy’s ability to adapt is included precisely because the opposite conclusion would be more sensational but less honest.

No government, political party, or organization commissioned, paid for, proofread, or approved this text.

ANALYSIS: Russia Is Now Paying India to Refine Its Own Oil — August’s Figures Contradict Putin