Bilateral deals happen all the time between countries. The difference here is that no one has tried to dress this up as a political or diplomatic event. This is an artifice-free exchange of one commodity for another.

For their part, Russia's national champions avert a nasty cash crunch. The world's second-largest oil producer has been floundering amid depressed crude prices and declining production: aggregate volumes shrank by almost 1 per cent last year. Rosneft, still growing output organically, is the country's biggest producer, 75 per cent controlled by the government. Its $15bn share of the $25bn loan package will comfortably cover its $8.5bn debt maturing this year. 60 per cent of that debt is owed to foreign banks; almost half of the total is due in the second quarter. Transneft, the over-extended national pipeline operator, mops up the remainder.

China does very nicely too. 300,000 barrels a day amounts to about 4 per cent of its total demand, or 8 per cent of its total oil imports. Russia is paying 6 per cent on the loans, implying that China is securing supplies at about $20 a barrel, according to UOB-Kay Hian, a Shanghai brokerage. As China buys most of its oil in the spot market, this is a significant saving.