Interactive map / Energy & trade
The great oil pivot.
By 2025, China and India remain the major buyers of Russian crude in this comparison. Follow the shift from Europe on one globe.
Updated 4 October 2026 · Annual: 2020–2025 · EU-27 reported subtotal · Monthly India: October 2025–July 2026.
Before the
great pivot.
The EU-27 reported subtotal exceeds China’s imports. India is still a small buyer.
Russian crude · thousand tonnes / day2020 · ANNUAL AVERAGE
Follow the monthly pulse.
Russia → India · October 2025–July 2026
The shift, over time
2020Three destinations · one scale · thousand tonnes / day · ≈ between observations · * source estimate
The evidence
| Period | EU-27 reported | China | India | Reporting markets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 295.568 | 227.990 | 7.173 | 129 |
| 2021 | 283.940* | 218.195 | 12.447 | 125 |
| 2022 | 251.941* | 236.296 | 101.425 | 125 |
| 2023 | 58.004 | 272.741* | 243.617 | 120 |
| 2024 | 35.422 | 296.364 | 251.390 | 109 |
| Oct 2025 | — | — | 239.434 | 55 |
| Nov 2025 | — | — | 268.258 | 58 |
| Dec 2025 | — | — | 193.948 | 57 |
| Jan 2026 | — | — | 146.545 | 52 |
| Feb 2026 | — | — | 194.589 | 51 |
| Mar 2026 | — | — | 196.394 | 55 |
| Apr 2026 | — | — | 227.068 | 47 |
| May 2026 | — | — | 288.923 | 46 |
| Jun 2026 | — | — | 298.079 | 38 |
| Jul 2026 | — | — | 369.736 | 22 |
Published period coverage · UN Comtrade · Period labels link to the exact source response. Earlier H1 2025 source: EIA
Method and coverage
Importer-reported Russian-origin crude oil, HS 270900. Net weight divided by calendar days, in thousand tonnes per day. EU-27 is the sum of available member-state route weights, not a certified complete total. Missing routes are not asserted to be zero. The top three EU buyers are fixed by reported 2020 weight: Germany, Netherlands and Poland. Rest of EU covers the other 24 members. UK, Norway and Türkiye are excluded. An asterisk marks source-estimated weight.
The Annual story compares EU-27, China and India. The separate Monthly India option shows ten published India-route observations from October 2025 through July 2026. It does not claim complete global-month coverage or show an EU/China monthly comparison. August 2026 is excluded because the India route is absent. Annual 2025 is read from the independently published data release. Any destination without a published route weight remains unavailable; it is not filled with zero. Annual EU values remain explicitly labeled reported subtotals. A market appearing in the crude-import response does not prove that its reporting is complete. Animation is illustrative between observations. Transitional figures carry ≈ and are illustrative interpolations; exact source observations remain available in the evidence table. Camera movement does not change the flow-width scale. Pause freezes the exact frame. Switching away suspends rendering and resumes automatically on return. Intermediate observations have no timed holds; flow and camera motion remain continuous. The earlier H1 2025 China figure was EIA analysis based on Global Trade Tracker, Argus and Vortexa, in barrels per day, and is not spliced into this Comtrade weight series. Natural Earth geometry via @d3-maps/atlas 1.0.0.
The 2025 update
The new pattern holds.
China and India remain the major buyers of Russian-origin crude in this comparison. In the full calendar year 2025, China reported 100.86 million tonnes and India 88.72 million tonnes. The available EU-27 routes add up to 9.92 million tonnes. These annual weights are converted and rounded from the published 2025 observations.
The daily averages shown on the globe are lower than in 2024 for all three destinations. The broad shift remains: China and India absorb far more reported Russian crude than the EU subtotal. The trade records establish where imports were reported; they do not establish the final buyer or the motives behind a shipment.
The EU figure is a reported subtotal, with routes to Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia. France’s 2025 annual dataset was unavailable at this update, and the other checked EU datasets supplied no Russian-crude route for this query. An absent route is left missing and is not treated as zero trade.
Updated 4 October 2026. China’s 2025 annual dataset was first released by UN Comtrade on 22 September 2026, after the earlier story’s 21 September evidence cutoff. This update adds the published annual observation. China release metadata · UN Comtrade availability and release timing.
2025 sources and calculation
Importer-reported imports from Russia, calendar year 2025, crude petroleum HS 270900. The source net weights are 100,855,331,239 kg for China and 88,723,174,160 kg for India. The EU subtotal is calculated from Slovakia’s 5,110,849,000 kg, Hungary’s 4,280,875,000 kg and Czechia’s 526,941,000 kg: 9,918,665,000 kg in total. Source: the published annual route response, checked 4 October 2026.
Million tonnes = kilograms ÷ 1,000,000,000, rounded to two decimal places above. The globe’s daily average is kilograms ÷ 365 ÷ 1,000,000, in thousand tonnes per day. The 2024 comparison uses 366 calendar days. Annual and monthly observations stay separate.
Explore the full oil and gas trade overview for other products, destinations and published periods.