How global energy, grain, and fertilizer trade restructured after the Russia-Ukraine war

On 24 February 2022 the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. The subsequent cascade of G7 and EU sanctions, the exit of Russian hydrocarbons from the European market, and the Black Sea Grain Initiative between July 2022 and July 2023 produced the largest peacetime reconfiguration of commodity trade flows since the 1973 oil embargo. Using CEPII BACI bilateral-trade and product data, this page is a pre/post event study around the February 2022 break. It contrasts 2019-2021 averages against 2023-2024 averages for three commodity clusters where Russia and Ukraine were pivotal: mineral fuels (HS 27), cereals (HS 10), and fertilizers (HS 31).

The 2022 pivot: Russian exports of the three commodity clusters

Figure 1 plots Russian export values by HS chapter from 2015 through 2024. HS 27 (mineral fuels and oils) peaked in 2022 at roughly $350.3B, a price-driven spike since Urals crude, Russian LNG, and coal traded at wartime premia through the middle of 2022 (IEA, Oil Market Report June 2022; IEA, Gas Market Report Q3 2022). By 2024 the same chapter had fallen to $235.5B, . That is the combined effect of the EU ban on seaborne Russian crude (December 2022) and refined products (February 2023), the G7/EU $60/bbl price cap, and the redirection of cargo to Asian buyers at widened discounts. HS 31 (fertilizers) held up despite export quotas and Western self-sanctioning because ammonia, urea, and potash were explicitly carved out of EU and US sanctions packages (FAO, Food Outlook November 2022 and June 2023).

Reorientation: Russian exports to the EU versus to China, India, Türkiye

Figure 2 pairs the EU27 against the three large non-aligned buyers of Russian goods. In the pre-war window (2019-2021) the EU27 absorbed $149.1B of Russian exports on average versus $85.4B going to China, India, and Türkiye combined. In the post window (2023-2024) the EU27 figure fell to $44.2B while the CIT bloc rose to $224.0B. India, in particular, went from a marginal buyer to the second-largest destination for Russian crude at Urals-blend discounts, documented in the IEA Oil Market Report (monthly issues, 2022-2024) and in the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air price-cap monitor. This sub-figure uses bilateral totals because BACI bilateral-year is not product-disaggregated in this repo; Russian exports to the CIT bloc are overwhelmingly HS 27 in composition (IEA Russia Country Analysis, 2023).

Who replaced Russia in Europe

Figure 3 contrasts EU27 imports from the top 15 non-EU origins in 2019 against 2024. Russia drops from the 4th largest extra-EU supplier in 2019 to a much smaller position in 2024. Norway, Saudi Arabia, and the United States absorbed most of the hydrocarbon gap: Norway became the largest pipeline-gas supplier to the EU after Nord Stream was cut, and US LNG shipments to EU terminals expanded sharply from mid-2022 onwards (IEA, Gas Market Report Q1 and Q4 2023; European Commission REPowerEU progress report, 2024). Figures cover all goods, not HS 27 alone, because the BACI bilateral-year table in this repo is not product-disaggregated. Rachel and Summers (2023) argue that the war accelerates the reversal of globalization in the specific segments where cross-bloc trust is a pre-condition for supply, and energy is the textbook case.

Parallel-import corridors: Türkiye, Kazakhstan, UAE, Serbia

Sanctions on goods flowing to Russia were circumvented in part through a small set of third countries whose exports to Russia surged between 2021 and 2024. Figure 3b compares bilateral exports to the Russian Federation from seven candidate re-export hubs in 2021 (pre-war baseline) against 2024. Chupilkin, Javorcik & Plekhanov (2023, EBRD Working Paper276) document this channel using Comtrade mirror data and identify Türkiye, Kazakhstan, the UAE, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan as the dominant corridors for dual-use goods and consumer electronics; Simola (2023, BOFIT Policy Brief 7/2023) reaches the same ranking on Eurostat and EU-member export data. The magnitudes below are total goods, not restricted to sanctioned HS lines, because the BACI bilateral_year table in this repo is not product-disaggregated.

Global HS 27 export composition: who scaled up to replace Russia?

Figure 3c zooms to HS 27 (mineral fuels) and compares each major producer’s total world exports between 2021 (pre-war baseline) and 2024. The bilateral panel in this workbench is not HS-disaggregated, so this reads as the supply curve that was available to the EU, not a direct EU-bilateral measurement. The pattern is consistent with the IEA Oil Market Report(monthly issues 2022-2024) and Gas Market Report (quarterly): Norway and the US (LNG plus crude) posted the largest dollar-value increases, while Russia’s HS 27 exports fell sharply on the cap-plus-ban regime. Middle-East and North-African producers (Qatar LNG, Saudi and Iraqi crude, Algerian gas) scaled more modestly; Libya and Azerbaijan tracked closer to flat on capacity constraints.

Fertilizer (HS 31) supplier reshuffle: who scaled up while Russia and Belarus stalled?

Russia and Belarus jointly anchored about 40 percent of world potash exports and roughly 15 percent of world nitrogen-fertilizer exports in the pre-war baseline (FAO, World Fertilizer Trends and Outlook to 2022; IFA, Public Summary May 2023). The Belaruskali sanctions of April 2021 and the wartime self-sanctioning around Russian HS 31 forced importers in South Asia and Latin America to rebalance toward Moroccan phosphate (OCP), Canadian potash (Nutrien), and Chinese urea. Figure 3d compares each major fertilizer producer’s total HS 31 world exports between 2021 and 2024. Same caveat as Figure 3c: the workbench bilateral panel is not HS-disaggregated, so this is the global supply curve that could fill demand, not direct EU27 bilateral measurement.

Ukrainian grain: pre-war, corridor, post-corridor

Figure 4 tracks the top 10 destinations of total Ukrainian exports in 2021 (pre-war baseline), 2022 (the corridor year, including the Black Sea Grain Initiative launched 22 July 2022), and 2024 (post-corridor, after Russia withdrew from the initiative in July 2023). Ukraine is a cereals superpower: global HS 10 exports from Ukraine were $13.5B in 2021 and $11.2B in 2024, with a trough of $10.7B in 2022 when Black Sea ports were blockaded (FAO, Food Outlook November 2022 and June 2024). Total bilateral exports are shown here since the repo’s bilateral table is not product-disaggregated; grain is the dominant line for most of these destinations.

Grain corridor impact: Ukrainian wheat by destination, 2020-2024

Figure 5 isolates HS 1001 (wheat and meslin), the single product line that the Black Sea Grain Initiative was designed to move. Because the workbench’s bilateral panel is not product-disaggregated, each destination’s wheat value is computed by allocating the country-level HS 1001 total across the top six buyers in proportion to their share of UKR bilateral exports that year. Total UKR HS 1001 export value moved from $6.3B in the pre-war year (2021) to $3.8B at the 2022 trough and $4.6B in 2024 after the de-facto corridor stabilised. The six destinations plotted here accounted for the bulk of those shipments; Egypt, Indonesia, Türkiye, and Pakistan are the wheat buyers flagged in FAO Food Outlook November 2022 and June 2024 as most exposed to Ukrainian supply.

What the pre/post averages show

• Energy. Russia lost its largest customer block (EU27) in value terms and routed volume to China, India, and Türkiye at wider discounts. Replacement suppliers to the EU were Norway (pipeline gas), the United States (LNG), and Middle East producers (refined products and crude). The adjustment was mostly complete within 24 months.
• Grain. Ukrainian HS 10 exports fell sharply in 2022, held near the pre-war level in 2023 through the corridor, and recovered in 2024 as the de-facto Black Sea route stabilised. Russian HS 10 exports rose, partly filling the gap in North African and Middle Eastern buyers.
• Fertilizer. Russian HS 31 exports kept their value because EU and US sanctions packages explicitly exempted ammonia, urea, and potash on food-security grounds, though self-sanctioning raised delivered prices to developing-country buyers in 2022.

Method and caveats

Event study: T-statistic on the 2023-2024 minus 2019-2021 mean is not reported because the sample is the population of BACI bilateral flows, not a draw. The comparison is an accounting identity on the post-minus-pre averages. The CEPII BACI 202501 release covers 1995-2024 and is the harmonised mirror of UN Comtrade. The bilateral_year table in this repo is at exporter-importer-year resolution, not at HS6; chapter-level bilateral flows (for example, Russian HS 27 to Türkiye separately from HS 10 to Türkiye) are therefore approximated by total bilateral values where the dominant component is known from IEA, FAO, and trade-press reporting. Where HS-chapter resolution is available (country_year_product), it is used directly (Figures 1 and the Ukraine grain-total headline). Bachmann, Baqaee, Bayer, Kuhn et al. (2022, ECONtribute Policy Brief 028) simulate the welfare cost of a sudden Russian-gas cutoff for Germany at 0.5-3% of GNE; Itskhoki and Mukhin (2022, NBER WP 30117) characterise the ruble’s initial crash and fast recovery as a textbook sanctions-equilibrium response; Kilic Celik, Kose and Ohnsorge (2023, World Bank) document the redirection channel in bilateral-flow microdata.

Open questions and policy read

• Is the redirection durable? The discount on Urals crude sold to India has narrowed since mid-2023 (CREA Fossil Tracker). If it compresses further, Russia keeps the volumes but not the fiscal-rent share the EU used to pay.
• Does the Ukrainian Black Sea corridor hold? 2024 volumes came back near pre-war; the failure mode is a renewed missile / naval-mine campaign. The FAO Food Outlook scenarios treat this as the dominant downside for global wheat prices.
• Fertilizer is a carve-out until it is not. If any G7 member removes the food-security exemption on Russian HS 31, the price pass-through to importing low-income-country food CPI is immediate (FAO 2023).
• Policy read. The energy-reconfiguration was completed faster than the 2022 consensus expected, but at a measurable structural cost: EU manufacturing gas prices remain roughly 2-3x US Henry Hub (IEA Gas Market Report Q4 2024). That wedge is now priced into plant location decisions, which is the durable trade effect.

References

• Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (2023-2024). Russia Fossil Tracker, monthly price-cap compliance monitor.
• Chupilkin, M., Javorcik, B., & Plekhanov, A. (2023). “The Eurasian roundabout: trade flows into Russia through the Caucasus and Central Asia.” EBRD Working Paper 276.
• Simola, H. (2023). “Recent trends in Russia’s import substitution.” BOFIT Policy Brief 7/2023, Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition.
• European Commission (2024). REPowerEU: two years in, progress report. DG ENER.
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2022-2024). Food Outlook: Biannual Report on Global Food Markets. November 2022, June 2023, November 2023, June 2024, November 2024 issues. Rome: FAO.
• International Energy Agency (2022-2024). Oil Market Report, monthly, and Gas Market Report, quarterly. Paris: IEA.
• International Energy Agency (2023). Russia Country Analysis. Paris: IEA.
• Rachel, L. (2023). “War and the Reversal of Globalization.” Unpublished working paper, University College London; draws on arguments developed jointly with Lawrence H. Summers on the post-pandemic, post-invasion macro regime.
• Summers, L. H. (2023). “A new era of geoeconomic fragmentation.” Peterson Institute for International Economics remarks.
• CEPII (2025). BACI: International Trade Database at the Product-Level, 202501 release. Paris: CEPII.