Russia is benefitting financially from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, analysts tell CBS News, as Tehran’s retaliatory strikes paralyze crude oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and send global energy prices skyward.
The U.S. Treasury issued a 30 day waiver last week on sanctions imposed on Russian energy sales over Moscow’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The waiver allows Russia to sell oil that was already loaded onto tankers.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the waiver a “narrowly tailored, short-term measure” to “promote stability in global energy markets,” and he insisted it would not “provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government.”
Some analysts, and Russia, disagree.
Already the increase in oil revenue is “quickly becoming a lifeline for Russia,” Luke Wickenden, a Europe-Russia Energy and Sanctions Analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CERA), told CBS News on Tuesday.
Amit Dave/REUTERS 
“Russian crude oil was trading at around a 10 to 20% discount” before the waiver eased the U.S. sanctions, Wickenden said. “Now, that discount has completely vanished and it’s pretty much at the exact same level as Brent crude,” which is widely seen as the international benchmark for oil prices
Wickenden told CBS News the boost in revenue for Moscow is, at least in part, down to the waiver incentivizing buyers of Russian oil to increase their imports.
“These countries that previously may have been slightly wary of importing this crude oil may actually increase their imports. So, for example, China’s imports have risen 22% compared to last month. Brazil’s has increased by 32% and Singapore’s has nearly tripled,” he said.
Further analysis from CERA shows Russia’s average crude oil export earnings during the first two weeks of the Iran war were worth an estimated $230 million per day — 26% more than February’s daily average, before the conflict.
The Kremlin hasn’t been shy about its boosted profits since the war started.
“We’re talking about additional revenue for our oil companies, which sell oil and petroleum products and are guided by the current price environment,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday. “Company revenues mean increased budget revenues.”
Earlier this month, Bessent also announced a 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to buy Russian oil — a step he said was to “enable oil to keep flowing into the global market” amid the war in the Middle East.
That represented a shift in policy for the Trump administration who last year had slapped 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 analysis from CERA.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that the Kremlin’s boosted income 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 because of our deep strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, Russia faced a deficit of more than $100 billion in 2026 alone,” Zelenskyy said. “Now, we see they have made around $10 billion over two weeks of the war in the Middle East.”
Wickenden told CBS News 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 [Russia] made in just the last year.”
Asked Wednesday by Sen. Mark Kelly if Russia had gained billions of dollars from rising oil prices and a pause on U.S. sanctions amid the war, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said only, “that is what has been reported,” and then referred the question to the secretaries of the treasury and energy.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, at the same Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, said he was not an economist and thus he would not “try and do those calculations. But as I talked about earlier, sometimes there are decisions made that will benefit adversaries at the same time policymakers think that it will benefit the American people.”
Ian Bremmer, the founder of global political risk research firm Eurasia group, told CBS News on Tuesday, however, that any financial benefits for Russia are unlikely to be a “gamechanger” for Moscow as it continues its war on Ukraine.
“A lot of Russians were dying, over 1 million casualties they’ve had in four years of the war, but it wasn’t slowing Putin down. So, his willingness to take those consequences, and the willingness to expose his own population to hardship, including economic hardship, has been very hot,” Bremmer said.
Bremmer did say, though, that the boost to Russia’s state coffers will give the Kremlin greater financial “flexibility” as it wages its war, and that could become a sore point for the U.S. 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 war of choice in Iran ends up directly helping the Russians, both indirectly and directly, as a consequence of choices of the Trump administration, that is what I think has people bent out of shape,” he said.