The media reported on China's record oil imports from Russia

In the first two months of 2026, China increased its imports of Russian oil to the highest level in the last 11 years. This was announced on March 20 by the MarketScreener publication.

According to statistics, in January—February, shipments from Russia to China amounted to 21.8 million tons, which is equivalent to 161 million barrels. In terms of daily volume, we are talking about 2.7 million barrels.

The publication writes that this year's figures are significantly higher than last year's — for the same period in 2025, China purchased 15.49 million tons (114.2 million barrels) from Russia. Thus, the growth was 41%.

In February, shipments also continued to increase relative to January. The daily increase reached 1% to 2.74 million barrels against 2.72 million a month earlier.

Resource phase: Asian countries return to oil purchases from Russia

The easing of US sanctions gives Japan, South Korea and a number of other countries the opportunity to diversify supplies.

On March 17, Reuters reported that Chinese companies took advantage of the easing of U.S. sanctions against the Russian oil sector and resumed energy purchases to stabilize markets amid the war in Iran. This is due to the favorable price of Russian oil, which is still lower than that of fuel from Brazil and West Africa.

On March 12, the US Treasury announced that as part of the changes in the US sanctions policy, an exception was granted for the sale of Russian oil and petroleum products until April 12. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained that the withdrawal of oil sales from Russia from US sanctions is aimed at reducing the cost of energy resources on world markets.

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