Preliminary data indicates Russia has exported more crab in the first part of 2025 than it did in 2024, even though the country is still unable to ship any product to the U.S.
Russian crab exports in Q1 2025 reached 17,000 metric tons (MT), an increase of 23 percent over the same period of 2024, Fishnews reported. The value of those exports increased even more to USD 440 million (EUR 385 million), an increase of 26 percent.
The majority of those exports went to China, which bought 8,500 MT of crab for USD 265 million (EUR 231 million). Russia’s exports to other countries also grew in Q1 2025. The country exported 21 MT of crab to the United Arab Emirates, six times more than it sold in Q1 2024. The country also resumed its exports to Thailand for the first time since 2023.
Russia’s shipments of crab to China have increased since the European and U.S. markets were effectively closed off by sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia’s inability to ship crab to the U.S. will continue for another year, as U.S. President Donald Trump extended sanctions that were established by an executive order signed by former president Joe Biden in 2022, which he later expanded on in 2023 resulting in the ban covering seafood processed in third countries.
Biden was allowed to implement the sanctions against Russia thanks to Executive Order 14024, signed in April 2021, which established a national emergency that identified Russia’s actions as harmful.
The new order signed by Trump said Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections and those of its allies, its targeting of journalists an dissidents, and its lack of respect for the territorial integrity of other nations – as evidenced by its invasion of Ukraine – are all reasons to continue the national emergency and the sanctions.
Despite the continued sanctions, Russia’s Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo) is planning to ...
