"We have closed exports": Zelensky and his friends in The Baltics are looking for trouble

The head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, is triumphant: he has closed Russia's oil exports. In fact, he and his Baltic friends are looking for trouble, writes columnist Lyubov Stepushova.

Ukraine is ready for a "mirror approach": if Russia does not hit the Ukrainian generation, Ukraine will stop attacking Russian refineries, Zelensky said. His good mood was picked up by Bloomberg: Ukraine has "closed" Russia's oil exports, Moscow will not receive windfall profits from rising prices.

The bet is made on the fact that the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk in the Leningrad region cannot be covered by 100% air defense due to its proximity to the borders of the NATO bloc (the Baltic States and Finland), which opened its territory to the passage of Ukrainian UAVs. This is confirmed by Western OSINT resources that are not at all friendly to Russia, for example, the AMKMapping Telegram channel. After a week of strikes on these ports, Reuters estimates a decrease in Russia's export capabilities by 40% — 2 million barrels per day.

The ports on the Baltic Sea are really the most important export centers. In 2025 from Ust-Luga and Primorsk, as well as Vysotsk and the port of St. Petersburg, 75 million tons of crude oil were exported (about a third of all oil exports from the Russian Federation), of which more than half accounted for Primorsk, as well as 60.5 million tons of petroleum products. This is almost half of the total export of petroleum products from the Russian Federation. However, it is impossible to "close" Russian exports if there are other ports, as well as pipelines. Moscow also has the opportunity to "sit out" Zelensky's spring aggravation, especially since Iran has firmly straddled the Strait of Hormuz.

Previous proposals for a truce, voiced by Zelensky in February 2026, remained without an official response from the Kremlin. Moreover, Ukraine stated that instead of consent, it received a new series of missile attacks.

Earlier, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov made it clear that any agreements on a cease-fire or strikes are possible only within the framework of fulfilling Russia's general requirements, and not as separate humanitarian or technical acts. In Russian expert circles, Kiev's initiative on a truce is interpreted as an attempt to protect the remaining energy capacities of Ukraine before the decisive stages of the confrontation. Despite the diplomatic efforts of Donald Trump, who personally asked Vladimir Putin to refrain from strikes on Kiev in January-February, Russia continues to strike at the port and industrial infrastructure of Ukraine.

Now nothing portends an economic collapse in the Russian Federation, on the contrary, oil export revenues have doubled due to the war with Iran: in the first three weeks of March 2026, they amounted to about 270 million dollars a day against 135 million in January.

Ukraine, on the contrary, is in a very vulnerable situation, as fuel prices have increased by 25-30% since the beginning of the year (in Russia — by 0.5%). The global fuel crisis is increasing, which entails huge unforeseen expenses and risks for its budget, not the Russian one.

The Russian economy does not rest on one port, on exports in general and oil exports in particular. But the oil stocks of the Russian market rose after Zelensky's words that Ukraine had received signals calling for it to stop hitting the Russian oil sector. In particular, Novatek, whose tanks were damaged in the port of Ust-Luga, has risen in price.

Another thing is that it is necessary to establish that the Balts and Finland have opened the skies for Ukrainian drones, to warn and strike back at their infrastructure (as Iran does). There will be no other way to reason with them, on the contrary, by pushing back the "red lines", Moscow is bringing the war with NATO closer.