Russia’s fertilizer industry has become a critically important and largely shielded pillar of its war economy. By invoking global food security concerns and humanitarian exemptions, Russian fertilizer producers continue to operate simultaneously as major agricultural exporters and as key suppliers of chemical inputs for the production of explosives and propellants. This dual‑use structure enables Russia to sustain the production of artillery, missiles, and rocket munitions while retaining access to international markets, financial services, and shipping infrastructure, despite extensive sanctions imposed on its energy and defense sectors.
We identified 56 Russian entities involved in the supply chain of chemical components used in fertilizers that feed into Russia’s primary explosives and propellants manufacturers, including 52 suppliers and 4 key enterprises of the defense‑industrial complex. Collectively, these entities were linked to contracts worth at least USD 98 million, split roughly evenly between private and state‑owned companies. Sanctions coverage remains highly uneven: none of the identified companies is sanctioned across all major jurisdictions, while 27 entities are not sanctioned in any of them. Fertilizer producers supply nitric acid and related compounds to enterprises affiliated with Rostec, including JSC Speckhimiya, enabling the estimated production of 3–4 million artillery shells per year.
At the same time, fertilizer exports have become one of Russia’s most resilient sources of foreign currency revenue. Between 2020 and 2025, Brazil alone accounted for nearly $22 billion in payments for Russian fertilizers, while India, China, the United States, and the European Union remain major importers. Western governments have adopted sharply divergent approaches: the European Union is moving toward managed economic decoupling through quotas, bans on potash fertilizers, and rising tariffs on nitrogen fertilizers; the United Kingdom and Canada have introduced high tariffs and, in Canada’s case, outright bans; while the United States maintains the most permissive regime, deliberately excluding fertilizers from sanctions and tariffs and thereby shielding one of Russia’s key war‑enabling export sectors from meaningful pressure.
These policies have allowed Russian fertilizer producers to retain access to Western‑linked financial, insurance, and logistics systems while continuing to supply chemical components critical to Russia’s defense industry. As a result, fertilizers have become both a strategic instrument of food diplomacy and a structural loophole in the sanctions architecture sustaining Russia’s war against Ukraine. Closing this gap requires coordinated action to integrate fertilizer trade into sanctions enforcement mechanisms, strengthen oversight of dual‑use chemical components, and restrict financial and logistics services that indirectly support explosives production in Russia under the cover of agricultural trade.