Turkish Window: Russia faces new export losses in the near future, even without additional sanctions
An analysis of Russia’s export dynamics to Turkey over recent years shows that the restructuring of Russian exports in response to sanctions is far from complete, and a new round of their consequences is yet to unfold in the coming years. In the first stage, Russia lost access to the premium markets of Europe and, to some extent, the United States, where it had secured fairly strong positions over previous decades. In effect, Russia was forced either to withdraw completely and look for niches in more 'budget' markets or to surrender the premium of operating in those markets to intermediaries, one of which was Turkey.
At this stage, Europe could not yet fully abandon Russian supplies. However, as commodity markets adapt to the new reality, such a withdrawal becomes increasingly feasible, while the 'sanctions circumvention premium' for countries not joining the sanctions regime continues to decline. As a result, the 'windows' through which Russia could maintain a presence in premium markets via intermediaries are gradually closing.
Moreover, commodity markets are adapting to a new reality in which Russia’s position appears weak even in the non-premium segment. Consequently, whenever a market surplus arises, Russian supplies are in the most vulnerable position.
Whereas it once seemed that Russia would play a key role in Turkish gas transit and could threaten Europe with 'energy wars', today it stands in a queue of gas sellers competing for access to the Turkish market and Turkey’s transit capacities. And, its place in that queue is closer to the end than the front.
Had the war ended last year or this year, Russia might still have had some chance of retaining a foothold in European markets. But within the next two years, the restructuring of supply systems 'without Russia' is highly likely to be completed once and for all.
A unique position
Since the start of the full-scale war, Turkey, while officially supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity and supplying Kyiv with weapons, has served both as a negotiation platform for the warring parties and, by ignoring Western sanctions, profited from its 'neutral' status. This has made it Russia’s third-largest trading partner after China and India. Since 2023, Turkey has been the largest buyer of Russian petroleum products; since 2024, the third-largest importer of Russian crude oil; and by 2025, the sole transit country for Russian gas to Europe.
Already in 2022, Russian exports to Turkey doubled from $28.96 billion to $58.85 billion, according to mirror data from importers of Russian products from the International Trade Centre, ITC, as confirmed by estimates from the Eurasian Research Institute. However, The lion’s share of this increase came from hydrocarbons: export revenues from these rose from $14.3 billion in 2021 to $41.8 billion in 2022 – $27.5 billion of the nearly $30 billion total increase. Part of this jump was due to higher prices, and part to a sharp rise in gas and coal exports, according to ITC data.
Unlike Russia’s other two major post-sanctions partners, India and China, Turkey focused mainly on purchasing petroleum products rather than crude oil. In the first year of the oil embargo, Turkey even cut its crude imports by 15%, from 12.8 million tonnes to 10.9 million, according to an analyst at the Finnish Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). The reason was a lack of spare refining capacity: Turkey has only seven refineries (compared with China’s 119 and India’s 22). Moreover, refineries owned by the largest holding, Tüpraş (which operates four of them), were undergoing repairs in 2022.
However, in February 2023, the EU and G7 countries imposed a further embargo on Russian petroleum products. This shaped Turkey's strategy of profiting from the sanctions, which capitalised on the country's strategic location on the Black Sea and the Bosphorus Strait. Numerous Turkish ports and storage facilities became the main transshipment hubs for Russian petroleum products destined for the rest of the world, including members of the sanctions coalition (the UK, US, and EU countries), according to a joint report by CREA and Bulgaria’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, Kremlin Pit Stop. As a result, Turkey has become a kind of ‘laundromat’ for 'washing' Russian energy resources, as summarised in the review ‘The Kremlin Playbook in Türkiye’.
In physical terms, exports of petroleum products already rose by 21% in 2022, ITC data show, and doubled again in 2023. According to CREA, in monetary terms supplies grew from $3.7 billion in 2021 to $17.6 billion in 2023 and $18.5 billion in 2024. Based on ITC mirror data, Turkey’s share of Russia’s petroleum product exports increased from 5% to almost 10% in the first year of the war, and by the end of 2024 reached nearly 24%. This made Ankara the world’s largest buyer of Russian petroleum products, the study notes.
The radical shift in the geography of Russia’s petroleum product exports clearly illustrates what has happened to Russian exports overall during the war and sanctions (see table). Before the war, two-thirds of Russian supplies went to the premium markets of the US and Europe. By 2024, that share had fallen to around 0.7%. A quarter of petroleum products now go to Turkey, around 30% to China, India, and Singapore, and 13% to Brazil. Other major importers include Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia.
Geography of Russian oil product exports, 2020–2024, %
Turkey and the drama of Russian exports
Although on a smaller scale, Turkey has played the same role in other segments of Russian exports as it has in the trade of petroleum products. For example, Russia exported around 14 million tonnes of coal to Turkey annually. In 2022, this volume jumped to 19.7 million tonnes, and in value terms rose from $1.44 billion to $3.9 billion. In subsequent years, the value of exports declined, but physical volumes continued to grow, reaching 27.9 million tonnes in 2023 and 24.4 million tonnes in 2024.
In 2021, Turkey ranked only fifth among importers of Russian coal, behind China, South Korea, Germany, and Japan. By 2024, exports to Germany had fallen almost to zero, and to Japan had dropped tenfold (before the war, Europe accounted for roughly a quarter of Russian coal exports). Turkey, meanwhile, rose to second place after China, with a 13% share. The reduction in 2024 volumes reflects an overall decline in Russian coal exports, which have become nearly unprofitable due to falling global prices and logistical difficulties. Even before the price collapse, in 2022, discounts on Russian coal averaged 35%, and for some grades reached 60%, according to Neft Research.
A similar story unfolded with copper exports. Ankara increased its purchases of Russian copper from $929 million in 2021 to $1.2 billion in 2024. At the same time, the total value of Russian exports in this commodity group (code 74 of the international classification), which also came under international sanctions, fell by more than 40% by 2024. Exports to the EU dropped tenfold, from $2.7 billion to $0.3 billion. The EU’s share of Russian copper exports shrank from 29%to 6%, while Turkey’s share rose from 10% to 29%.
In addition, over the past three years Turkey has significantly increased imports from Russia of nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery, and mechanical equipment (commodity group 84), from $214 million in 2021 to $662 million in 2024. While Russian exports of these goods to other countries more than halved (from $10.8 billion to $4.45 billion), Turkey boosted its imports by $450 million. Europe (including the EU and the United Kingdom), by contrast, reduced imports of such goods by $650 million. Turkey also increased its imports of organic chemicals by 2.2 times, reaching $523.5 million, while overall Russian exports of these products almost halved (to $1.85 billion). Significant growth was also seen in wood exports (up 3.5 times, to $174.45 million) and paper and cardboard (up 36%, to $160 million).
At the same time, Turkey fully capitalised on the sharp decline in the presence of Russian goods on Western markets and substantially expanded its trade with Europe. According to the European Commission, from 2021 to 2024, Turkey’s exports to the EU increased by 26%, reaching €98.4 billion (approximately $106.5 billion). Ankara helped Europe to find replacements for a range of Russian goods whose import had been banned.
Overall, Turkey’s share of Russian exports jumped from 5% in the pre-war period to 10% in 2022. Although export volumes in value terms declined somewhat in 2023–2024 due to falling prices, Turkey’s share remained stable at 10–11%. Thus, along with China and India, Turkey played one of the central roles in the drama of Russian exports, which as a result of the war, was forced out of premium markets, above all Europe, the United States, and Japan, and redirected towards more 'budget' destinations in Asia, as well as partly in Africa and Latin America. Turkey, to a large extent, acted as an operator in this process, taking in some of the goods formerly supplied to Europe and re-exporting them to various countries, including European ones, while pocketing the European price premium.
Geography of Russian exports (largest trading partners), 2020–2024, %
Turkish re-exports: the shop is closing
The doubling of Turkey’s fuel imports from Russia coincided with a sharp increase in its fuel exports to other countries. During the first year of the Western embargo on petroleum products, Turkish companies boosted their exports by 75%, reaching 7.6 million tonnes, according to the Kremlin Pit Stop report. Between February 2023 and February 2025, the EU imported petroleum products worth almost $10 billion from Turkish ports, the study ‘The Kremlin Playbook in Türkiye’ notes. The difference between the value of imports from Russia to Turkey and Turkey’s subsequent exports to the EU during the first year of the embargo was estimated at 24%.
Three Turkish Black Sea ports without nearby refineries – Ceyhan, Marmara Ereğlisi, and Mersin – exported 5.16 million tonnes of petroleum products worth €3.1 billion to the EU during the first year of the embargo. At the same time, 86% of the petroleum products imported into these ports originated from Russia. For example, in May 2023, the Toros Ceyhan terminal in the port of Ceyhan received 26,900 tonnes of gasoil from Novorossiysk, which was its first such delivery in at least three months. Ten days later, the terminal shipped a similar volume of gasoil to Greece’s Motor Oil Hellas refinery.
Since the introduction of the embargo, Ceyhan has become Turkey’s second-largest exporter of petroleum products to the EU. According to CREA, in the first year of sanctions the port imported a total of 3.02 million tonnes of petroleum products, 92% of which came from Russia. In 2023, the port’s activities attracted scrutiny from the media, American human rights groups, and the then-future Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who suspected that re-exported petroleum products were reaching the United States. This nearly resulted in sanctions by the US Treasury. In February 2024, Global Terminal Services, the operator of one of the port’s terminals, announced a suspension of imports from Russia. Nevertheless, shipments to other Ceyhan terminals and other Turkish ports continued, as did the resale of these volumes to Western markets. According to a CREA analyst interviewed by Re:Russia, during the first three quarters of 2025, the EU imported petroleum products worth €2.5 billion from the ports of Mersin, Marmara Ereğlisi, and Ceyhan, with Russia remaining their main source. Although EU imports from these ports fell by 13% in 2025, trade continued steadily despite persistent suspicions of possible re-exports of Russian-origin fuel.
Moreover, Russian oil companies were not only redirecting supplies to Turkey but also directly involved in their resale, according to CREA. The Turkish fuel distributor Akpet, which operates eight petroleum terminals including Mersin, was purchased by Lukoil back in 2008. And in the spring of 2023, Tatneft became the owner of another trader, Aytemiz, one of the country’s largest retail fuel chains (operating 590 petrol stations), owning 10 terminals and storage facilities with a total capacity of 250,000 cubic metres in Mersin, İzmit, Kırıkkale, Trabzon, and Alanya. These ports are also among Turkey’s largest exporters of petroleum products to the EU.
At the same time, a significant share of profits from petroleum product shipments via Turkey is captured by trading intermediaries linked to major Russian oil companies operating in the EU market, according to CREA analysts. These traders are typically registered in tax havens such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the UAE. As a result, the trade in Russian petroleum products via Turkey forms part of a vertically integrated supply chain, in which the same Russian company or affiliated entity controls revenues both from exports out of Russia and from their resale within the EU.
In 2024, Turkey increased its exports of petroleum products to Europe by 44%, becoming the third-largest supplier to the EU (having ranked seventh at the start of 2023), according to another CREA review. During the same period, European supplies from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, grew by only 9%. The fact that EU countries turned a blind eye to the origin of petroleum products imported from Turkey, despite their own embargo, is explained by price differences. CREA estimates that in the first year of sanctions, the average import price of petrol from Turkey was €0.63 per kilogram, compared with €0.70 per kilogram from Saudi Arabia (10% higher). A similar pattern applied to diesel prices.
Another example of re-exporting Russian energy resources was the so-called 'SOCAR scheme'. In 2024, Turkey increased its purchases of Russian crude oil by 1.5 times, from 10.9 million to 16.7 million tonnes. This rise was largely linked to operations at the SOCAR Türkiye Aegean Refinery (STAR), owned by Azerbaijan’s SOCAR, according to ‘The Kremlin Playbook in Türkiye’. In 2024, Lukoil increased its exports to this refinery by 5 million tonnes, resulting in STAR switching entirely to Russian crude, having sourced only 25% of its feedstock from Russia at the start of 2023.
The increase in Russian oil purchases was a condition of a $1.5 billion loan that SOCAR received from Lukoil in autumn 2023 (Lukoil needed to redirect supplies intended for its Burgas refinery). In addition to the loan, Lukoil and other Russian companies offered discounts of $5–20 per barrel on its oil. According to CREA estimates, Turkish refiners saved up to €3.1 billion from these discounts during 2023–2024. Meanwhile, the EU, G7, Australia, Norway, and Switzerland imported around 4.1 million tonnes of petroleum products in 2024 produced by STAR and two Tüpraş refineries of which 2.6 million tonnes (€1.8 billion) were refined from Russian crude, according to the authors of ‘The Kremlin Playbook’.
Most Turkish exports to the EU were not formally in breach of the embargo, which did not prohibit the import of mixed or refined products. Only in July 2025, as part of the 18th sanctions package, did the EU finally close this loophole, which had allowed Russian oil to enter the market through a 'back door'. A six-month transition period remains in effect until the end of the year. On 15 October, the United Kingdom also joined this ban, having, according to CREA, been an active buyer of Russian energy products routed through Turkey.
However, the new European system for verifying the origin of petroleum products will rely largely on trust, raising concerns about its effectiveness, a CREA analyst told Re:Russia. It is quite possible that loopholes for such supplies will persist, though the previous scale of Russian petroleum re-exports to Europe will almost certainly not return. Compared with 2022, the situation on global fuel markets has changed dramatically: the oil market is now in surplus, putting pressure on prices, which reduces the profitability of sanctions evasion while the political pressure associated with it continues to grow.
From a seller's market to a buyer's market
Finally, gas transit is another key element of Turkey's strategy to transform the country into an energy hub capitalising on its unique position at the crossroads of Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Asia. In the early decades of this century, it appeared that Russia would play the central role in this strategy. During Vladimir Putin’s time in power, two gas pipelines from Russia to Turkey were built across the Black Sea: the Blue Stream, with a capacity of 16 billion cubic metres per year, and the TurkStream, consisting of two parallel lines with a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic metres each, which came online in January 2020, just two years before the war. In total, this route can carry up to 47 billion cubic metres of gas annually.
Before the launch of the first gas pipeline under the Black Sea, Russia supplied Turkey with around 14 billion cubic metres of gas. By the end of the last pre-war year, 2021, exports of Russian gas to Turkey had risen to 26.8 billion cubic metres, according to Federal Customs Service data, which is about 15 per cent of Russia’s total gas exports to non-CIS countries (185 billion cubic metres). In 2024, gas supplies from Russia to Turkey, according to Turkish and European statistics, amounted to more than 21 billion cubic metres, i.e. they decreased by more than 20% in physical terms, but their share in Russian gas exports increased to 18% due to an overall reduction of more than a third (to 119 billion cubic metres).
Russia’s revenue from gas exports to Turkey in 2022–2024, according to CREA estimates, exceeded $26.5 billion (compared with $19.66 billion from oil and $44.54 billion from oil products). Gas, like oil, is sold to the Turkish market at discounted prices. Moreover, a substantial portion of gas deliveries is made on credit. This is a critical factor for Ankara, which is still recovering from a prolonged economic and financial crisis. According to Turkish media reports, Turkey’s total debt for Russian gas reached $20 billion in 2023, later rising to $27.5 billion.
At present, however, Moscow has few levers of influence over Ankara. Several long-term contracts between Russia’s Gazprom and Turkish companies cover deliveries of roughly 22 billion cubic metres of gas per year, but these contracts are set to expire between late 2025 and early 2026 and have yet to be renewed. Turkey is likely to extend some of them but will seek more flexible terms and smaller volumes in order to diversify its supply sources, says the Paris-based Mediterranean Organisation for Energy and Climate.
Alongside Russian gas, Turkey also has a long-term contract with Iran for 10 billion cubic metres, which will expire in 2026, and contracts with Azerbaijan for 9.5 billion cubic metres, valid until the early 2030s. Recently, Turkey has also signed several large contracts for the supply of 15 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is about 30 per cent of its domestic consumption, for the 2026–2028 period, said Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar. Suppliers include companies from the UK, the US, Germany, Japan and Norway. Furthermore, during President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to the United States, Turkey’s largest gas company, Botaş, signed a 20-year contract with international trader Mercuria for the delivery of 70 billion cubic metres of US LNG, Reuters reported. Of that amount, 4 billion cubic metres will be delivered next year. Turkey already has port capacity to handle 58 billion cubic metres of liquefied gas per year, which covers its domestic demand of 52 billion cubic metres. The Turkish minister told Reuters that Ankara intends to purchase gas from all available suppliers, including Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan, but that American LNG currently represents a cheaper alternative.
Since Turkey now requires less Russian gas, Botaş could theoretically halt imports from Russia within two to three years, says Alexei Belogoryev, research director at the Institute of Energy and Finance. In practice, this is unlikely, as Russian gas remains price-competitive and provides surplus volumes that Turkey can use to exert pressure on other suppliers. Ankara may use Russian and Iranian gas domestically while exporting its own production and re-exporting LNG, notes an expert from the Mediterranean Organisation for Energy and Climate. This will become especially relevant closer to 2028, when the EU plans to completely ban imports of Russian gas. It is clear that in such a scheme, Russian gas must be cheap – priced at roughly domestic-market levels – for re-export operations to be profitable.
Either way, both Turkey’s domestic gas market and the transit market through its territory are now buyer’s markets, that is, markets dominated by Turkey itself rather than by suppliers. Turkey will determine how much gas it purchases from Russia and on what terms, and it can even soften 'take-or-pay' clauses, seeking greater price flexibility. Before the war, Moscow appeared to be a powerful energy power, able to choose delivery routes with excess pipeline capacity built for this purpose, dictate terms (including political ones) and threaten Europe with 'energy wars' (→ Vakulenko: Embargo Dilemmas). Today, the situation has changed dramatically: Moscow now stands in the queue of suppliers to Turkey, and not near the front of it.
In the first year of the war, immediately after the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, Vladimir Putin proposed redirecting the gas that had previously been supplied through these pipelines to Turkey and making it the largest gas hub for Europe. It soon became clear that the project was unviable, and by June 2025 Gazprom itself was forced to acknowledge this reality. Turkey, meanwhile, continues to pursue its own energy-hub strategy, but Russia’s role in that vision is visibly shrinking.
The two cases, supplies of Russian oil products and Russian gas to Turkey, show that the drama of Russia’s export restructuring in 2022–2024 is far from over. Rather, a second act is about to begin. In the first act, Russia lost the premium market niches it had occupied for decades. In the second, the channels for re-exporting its products to premium markets via intermediaries, who captured that 'premium' for themselves, are closing. Commodity markets are adapting to a new reality in which Russia’s position appears weak even in non-premium segments. This means that, in the event of a market surplus, Russian supplies will find themselves in the most vulnerable position.
Had the war ended in 2024 or even this year, Russia might still have had a chance to retain some footholds in European markets. But by 2025–2027, it is highly likely that the restructuring of Europe’s energy supply system 'without Russia' – even if it has to enter 'through the back door' – will have been completed. And even if the war ends and sanctions are eased, regaining its former position will remain a formidable challenge.