Russia exporting oil to India, China

Oil exports to the two most populous countries on the planet, India and China, have made up 90% of all Russia's crude exports this year.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Russian state broadcaster Rossiya-24 on Wednesday.

Novak, whose portfolio includes control of the country's energy sector, said Moscow had successfully circumvented the effects of Western sanctions amid its invasion of Ukraine by rerouting supplies primarily to the two Asian giants.

He said that this process had already begun before its February 2022 invasion and the sanctions that soon followed, but that US and EU restrictions had served as a catalyst for it.

“As for those restrictions and embargoes on supplies to Europe and the U.S. that were introduced ... this only accelerated the process of reorienting our energy flows,” Novak said.

He said that the share of Russian oil exports to EU members had fallen to around 4% or 5%. By comparison, Russian oil exports to the resource-rich US were always very limited in scope.