Russia's Pivot to Asia Worked for Oil Because Oil Floats. Gas and Coal Are Stuck on Pipes and Rails

Three and a half years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the outcome of Western energy sanctions on Russia can be read in a few numbers. Russian crude exports are only modestly lower than before the war. Gas exports to Europe have collapsed and have not been replaced. Coal exports are lower and squeezed by rail bottlenecks. The difference between these outcomes is not mainly about sanctions design. It is about infrastructure. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Russia exported an average of 5.0 million barrels a day of crude and condensate between 2020 and 2024.

Exports were 4.8 million barrels a day in 2024 and 4.3 million in the first half of 2025, lower but still substantial. Europe took 51 per cent of Russia's crude and condensate exports in 2020, but only 12 per cent in 2024 and 11 per cent in the first half of 2025, with more than half of that going to Türkiye. China remains the largest buyer, at 2.2 million barrels a day in 2024 and 2.0 million in the first half of 2025, an increase of 500,000 barrels a day from 2020.

India is the more remarkable story: Russian exports to India rose from about 50,000 barrels a day in 2020 to 1.7 million barrels a day in 2024 and averaged 1.6 million in the first half of 2025. Russia's main eastern gas route is Power of Siberia 1, whose construction began in 2014. The obvious solution, Power of Siberia 2, has been discussed for years. The infrastructure contrast explains why Western policy has increasingly focused on oil buyers rather than on Russia alone.

The logic is that if oil is the commodity Russia can redirect easily, the pressure point is the buyer. The broader lesson is that the effectiveness of energy sanctions depends heavily on the physical form of the commodity.