Russia's largest oil company's net income drops by 73% in 2025

Rosneft's net income fell by 73% to 293 billion rubles ($3.6 billion) last year due to high taxes and interest rates, among other factors, the company said on March 31.

"In 2025, the Russian oil industry found itself at the epicenter of a 'perfect storm'," facing unfavorable market and macroeconomic conditions and a volatile geopolitical environment, CEO Igor Sechin said in a company press release.

Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's first- and second-largest oil companies, respectively, were sanctioned by the U.S. in October 2025 as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's pressure on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.

Oil exports are a key source of funds for Russia's federal budget, helping to sustain the country's war effort. Rosneft accounts for roughly one-third of Russia's crude production.

Rosneft's 2025 revenue dropped by 18.8% from 2024 to 8.236 trillion rubles ($102 billion). EBITDA, a metric that shows the company's core operating profit excluding financing, accounting, and tax effects, declined by 28.3% to 2.173 trillion rubles ($27 billion).

The company has faced "systemic pressures" via Western sanctions, including price caps, embargoes, and insurance denial, Sechin said.

Logistics costs also increased, with freight rates for transporting Russian oil from the Baltic Sea to India exceeding $20 per barrel — a tenfold hike since 2022, the executive noted.

Low oil prices in 2025 and a strong ruble contributed to a decline in sales revenues, and Ukrainian strikes against Russian energy infrastructure further destabilized the industry, according to Sechin.

While the drop in oil revenues contributed to the economic strains Russia faced last year, experts believe Moscow is bound to get a reprieve after the U.S.-Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which drove a worldwide energy price spike.

The market instability also led the U.S. to ease some sanctions on the Russian oil sector.

However, Sechin said that the impact of the current price spike should not be overestimated, as it is "largely offset by rising freight, insurance, and currency conversion costs."

read also

Exclusive: Inside Russia’s shadow fleet

The vessels are old, their hulls streaked with rust, and their ownership obscured behind layers of shell companies. Yet the tankers that make up Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, the armada used to move sanctioned oil across the globe, are kept running with modern Western technology including Starlink, an investigation by the Kyiv Independent can reveal. To gain an insight into how the shadow fleet operates, the Kyiv Independent spoke to two Ukrainian sailors who claim they unwittingly became p

The Kyiv IndependentTanya Kozyreva

Why Rheinmetall and the West still don’t understand Ukraine’s defense tech revolution

When evaluating military technology, it helps to distinguish between two domains: the industrial and the battlefield. Rheinmetall is unquestionably a large company that produces effective weapons systems that actually work on the battlefield. This is a fact that does not require emotional amplification or denial. But those two domains carry different kinds of authority, and conflating them leads to poor analysis. The statement by Rheinmetall’s CEO, Armin Papperger, about Ukrainian drones goes

The Kyiv IndependentBohdan Krotevych