Ukraine war accelerates Russian timber exports with devastating consequences

Global Watch | 2026-04-16

Russia's war in Ukraine is not financed solely by oil, gas and metals. It also relies on quieter sectors that attract far less attention. Timber is one of them.

As Moscow searches for every available source of revenue, Russia's vast forests are being pulled deeper into the wartime economy, alongside other networks that help sustain the Kremlin's war machine.

What looks like a trade story is also an environmental one, with consequences that stretch far beyond Russia's borders.

This matters because Russia holds about one-fifth of the world's forest area, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

When logging pressure rises there, the damage does not stay local. It feeds biodiversity loss, increases carbon emissions and adds to global deforestation.

Forests for profit

The Kremlin is spending heavily on the war and squeezing value from every export sector it still can.

In September 2024, Reuters reported that Russia had sharply raised its defense spending for 2025—to 13.5 trillion rubles ($145 billion), a 25% increase and the highest level as a share of GDP since the Cold War.

In this system, sectors like timber may sit outside the political spotlight, but they still matter.

China has become one of Russia's most important economic lifelines under sanctions pressure, with Beijing deepening its resource-focused external ties as it seeks a secure supply.

Bilateral trade reached a record $244.8 billion in 2024, with raw materials—including timber—forming a key part of the eastward shift. As European markets narrowed or closed, more Russian wood was redirected toward China and other alternative buyers.

This is not a clean trade. For years, Russian officials and environmental groups have warned that timber exports to China are linked to illegal and destructive logging.

In a 2019 interview, then-Natural Resources Minister Dmitry Kobylkin complained that Chinese buyers were taking illegal timber while Russia was left to deal with the damage: "They come, buy up the (illegal) timber and leave us to clear up the debris."

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has described parts of Russia's forest sector—particularly in the Far East—as "deeply criminalized," with poor law enforcement enabling large-scale illegal logging.

The war has made those problems harder to control. Sanctions did not remove Russian wood from global markets; they simply changed the routes. Instead of disappearing, timber often moves through more opaque supply chains, making enforcement weaker and scrutiny harder.

Damage beyond Russia

That shift is now creating wider international risks.

In January 2025, the investigative organization Earthsight published its report "Blood-stained Birch," documenting how sanctioned Russian and Belarusian birch plywood—worth more than €1.5 billion since mid-2022—was being laundered through countries such as China, Kazakhstan and Turkey before reaching European buyers.

World Forest ID has similarly flagged Russian birch products moving through secondary supply chains in ways that obscure their true origin.

This creates a double problem.

First, the war economy gives Moscow a stronger incentive to exploit whatever raw materials still bring in cash.

Second, indirect trade routes make it harder for regulators, importers and consumers to know where wood products actually originate.

Researchers are also tracking how the war has reshaped the timber trade.

An October 2025 study in the journal Forests found that the invasion disrupted Russian timber supply patterns, increased volatility and forced Chinese buyers to adjust their sourcing.

But disruption does not necessarily reduce pressure on forests. In wartime conditions, instability can push producers to extract resources faster, sell them cheaper and rely on weaker oversight.

The lesson is straightforward: Russia's forests are not separate from the war economy—they are part of it.

As long as the Kremlin depends on raw-material exports to absorb financial pressure, timber will remain economically useful and politically convenient.

That means the environmental damage will keep spreading too. What is happening in Russia's forests is not just a regional story.

It is part of a larger system in which war, trade and weak enforcement combine to drive deforestation on a global scale.