US-Sanctioned Vessels Shipped $11 Billion of Russian Oil Last Year
Vessels that have been sanctioned by the U.S. shipped more than $11 billion worth of Russian oil last year, a data analysis shows.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the U.S. and other Western countries imposed a range of economic and trade sanctions, including on Russian oil, to squeeze Moscow’s economy.
Despite the sanctions, according to analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), tankers sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) carried $11,728,000,000 of oil from February 24, 2025, to February 24, 2026.
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Treasury by email for comment.
CREA aggregated OFAC data and found that U.S.-sanctioned tankers carried 25.9 million tons of oil across 268 voyages.
China was responsible for importing the vast majority of the oil (66 percent) and other countries that traded Russian oil included Syria, India, Brunei, Indonesia, Cuba and Japan.
Newsweek created a graphic breaking down the countries that traded the oil, the amount of oil the countries traded and the oil’s value.
Mark Temnycky, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank’s Eurasia Center, told Newsweek that the analysis “reveals a significant gap between the state's objectives for U.S. sanctions policy toward the Russian Federation and their real-world impact.”
“The fact that these vessels continued to operate, complete trades, and transport Russian oil means that the Russian Federation profited from these events,” he said. “It also suggests serious enforcement shortfalls in the sanction policy targeting Russia's energy sector, indicating the Russian Federation is not feeling the full consequences of these sanctions.”
It follows Newsweek reporting that from January 2024 to January 2025, the U.S. imported $192 million in oil products from Nayara Energy, a refiner backed by Rosneft Energy-a Russian company that is sanctioned by the U.S.
In January 2025, Newsweek revealed that American firms in Russia paid the country $1.2 billion in profit taxes in 2023.
Electronic components manufactured by U.S. companies are still turning up in Russian fighter jets via intermediary trade routes, according to a July report from the International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO) and media outlet Hunterbrook that was shared exclusively with Newsweek.
In a new report, CREA also found that in its fourth year of war, Russia’s income from fossil fuel exports dropped by 19 percent year-on-year and 27 percent below pre-invasion levels. Meanwhile, Russian revenues from crude oil exports dropped by 18 percent year-on-year while volumes fell by 6 percent.
Meanwhile, America’s fresh conflict with Iran has created new pressures. While U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on India to pressure it to limit its economic relationship with Russia, the U.S. last week provided India with a 30-day waiver to buy the Kremlin’s oil in order to ease the demand on global oil supplies as gas and oil prices soar. Iran had shut off shipping access through the Strait of Hormuz, through which most Middle Eastern oil flows.
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This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 12:11 PM.