Zelensky: russia pockets $10b from us-israel war while trump eases sanctions

Volodymyr Zelensky dropped a bombshell Sunday night: Moscow has already clawed back $10 billion of its oil-trade losses in the two weeks since Washington and Tel Aviv opened their joint assault on Iran. The cash came courtesy of sky-high crude prices and, more quietly, a four-week sanctions holiday quietly granted by the Trump administration.

A sanctions pause worth 10% of the year's losses

The Ukrainian president posted the figure on X after reviewing Kyiv’s latest intelligence packet. The same briefing shows Russia’s total energy-revenue hole this year already tops $100 billion, the legacy of Western embargoes and Ukrainian drone strikes that have turned refineries into bonfires from the Black Sea to the Urals. Ten billion dollars is barely a dent in that crater—yet it is oxygen for a Kremlin budget that had been turning blue.

Oil markets have been on a tear since 28 February, when Operation Epic Fury began pounding Iranian export terminals. Brent futures jumped 18 % in eight trading sessions; Urals blend, still discounted but now flowing to a larger pool of non-Western buyers, tracked the surge. Every extra dollar on the barrel adds roughly $2.7 billion to Russian federal coffers over a full quarter, according to the Kyiv School of Economics. Two weeks of Mid-East chaos has therefore handed Moscow a windfall equal to one-fifth of its monthly military procurement budget.

Trump’s four-week sanction waiver

While the Pentagon was uploading bunker-buster videos, the U.S. Treasury was quietly rewriting compliance rules. A temporary waiver, announced Friday, allows American and European traders to handle Russian crude for 30 days provided the cargo is priced below the G7 cap. The White House frames it as a release valve for global supply; Zelensky calls it a direct subsidy to the army shelling Kharkiv. The timing is awkward: the same week Washington pledged fresh long-range rockets to Ukraine, it opened a financial back door for the country those rockets are meant to stop.

Russian oil is hardly wallowing in purity. Tankers bearing the flag of shadow fleets—re-flagged, uninsured, and often broadcasting spoofed AIS signals—have moved 1.4 million barrels per day through the Baltic and Pacific since the waiver took effect, ship-tracking data from TankerTrackers show. The cargoes are heading mostly to India and China, but a growing slice is re-exported as “Malaysian blend” or “UAE origin,” laundering the crude back into European refineries that technically observe the embargo.

Tehran’s chokehold on hormuz backfires

Iran’s response to the air campaign has been to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a gauntlet. Twelve commercial tankers have been hit by limpet mines or one-way drone boats since 1 March, forcing insurers to slap war-risk premiums of $700,000 per passage. Roughly 21 % of globally traded oil used to transit the strait; today the queue of laden very-large-crude-carriers stretches 40 nautical miles. Every day the waterway remains a war zone, Russia gains market share and pricing power.

A single non-Iranian tanker, the 300-kton Princess Nikka, brazenly broadcast its AIS signal while transiting Hormuz Monday morning—an olive branch from Tehran, or perhaps a probe to see if the U.S. Navy will escort neutral shipping. Either way, the symbolism is clear: Iran can throttle the artery, but not sever it, leaving Moscow to pocket the risk premium.

What $10 billion buys putin

Ten billion dollars translates into 2,300 new T-90M tanks, or 18 months of Kalibr missile production at the current burn rate. It also erases the fiscal deficit the Kremlin projected for the second quarter, freeing the Finance Ministry to dangle wartime bonuses before regional governors ahead of the 2025 election cycle. Most importantly, it buys time: the Russian economy is overheating—military wages are pushing inflation toward 9 %—but fresh hard currency delays the moment when battlefield spending collides with consumer wrath.

Zelensky’s warning is blunt: “Every barrel discounted for Russia is a shell aimed at Ukraine.” The arithmetic is uglier than any speech. If Hormuz remains a no-go zone and Washington keeps the sanction tap half-open, Moscow could bank another $15–20 billion before the summer. That is enough to fund the current tempo of assaults along the Donetsk front for the rest of the year.

The West now faces a perverse feedback loop: the more it bombs Iran, the more it enriches Russia. Meanwhile Ukraine, starved of the same cash flow, watches its battlefield initiative bleed into spreadsheets written in Washington and Riyadh. The war that began with tanks may be decided by tankers.