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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sit in a car during a welcome ceremony at Palam Air Force Base in New Delhi, India, on December 4, 2025.
Grigory Sysoev | via Reuters
A day earlier, President Donald Trump said India had agreed to stop buying Russian oil as part of the new deal. US-India Trade AgreementThe Kremlin said it had received no information from New Delhi indicating that those flows were stopping.
“We have not heard any statement from Delhi on this matter,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in comments reported by the news agency. RIA Novosti.
“We respect the bilateral relations between the United States and India,” Peskov told reporters. “But we equally value the development of an advanced strategic partnership between Russia and India.”
“This is of utmost importance to us and we intend to further develop our bilateral relations with Delhi,” he said.
Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former oil minister, played down any possibility of the loss of Indian customs, telling reporters on Tuesday: “We have only seen public statements. We will see how the situation develops.”
“But overall, there is demand for our energy resources; we see this all the time. Supply will always find demand because the balance is maintained,” he said in comments TASS reports.
Skepticism prevails
Trump announces trade deal with India In a post by Truth Society It said on Monday that an agreement had been reached during a phone call with Modi.
“We talked about a lot of things, including trade and ending the war with Russia and Ukraine,” Trump said. “He agreed to stop buying Russian oil and buy more oil from the United States and possibly Venezuela,” he added.
Trump said the United States would cut key tariffs on India from 25% to 18% and would cancel the additional 25% punitive tariffs imposed on New Delhi last summer in retaliation for India’s purchase of Russian oil.
Modi Confirming that the latest agreement with the United States has been reached, Post on X On Monday, he was “happy that tariffs on products made in India are now reduced by 18%”.
India certainly It seems to have been contained Russian oil purchases have been reduced due to punitive 25% tariffs imposed by Washington, but analysts are skeptical that the country will halt those purchases entirely given its demand for cheap oil, desire for foreign policy autonomy and close geopolitical and defense ties with Russia, which has become the largest buyer of discounted Russian crude after the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022.
“I find it hard to believe that the Indian government would make any explicit commitments related to Russian oil,” said Evan A. Feigenbaum, vice president for research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Analyzing Tuesday.
“After all, India has deep historical and emotional ties with Russia and will not simply give up under U.S. pressure,” he noted. “Maintaining a symbolic hedge that allows India to purchase Russian oil if it so chooses demonstrates both India’s foreign policy autonomy and its ability to resist U.S. coercion, both of which are important factors in India’s domestic politics.”
Feigenbaum noted that while there are signs that New Delhi has Gradually reduce India imports Russian crude oil and publicly blaming Russia has always been “impossible” for Modi, who “cannot afford to humiliate one of India’s most important defense partners,” he said.
balancing act
Farwa Aamer, director of the South Asia Initiative at the Asia Society Policy Institute, agreed that New Delhi is unwilling to abandon a trading partner with which it has deepened ties in recent years. Still, India is keen not to derail its rapprochement with the United States after months of trade tensions.
“For India, the Russia issue remains,” he said in emailed comments on Tuesday.
“Although India has and will change its oil import structure away from Russia, India still wants to keep the relationship stable. It is certainly a balancing act when India is dealing with these two critical relationships at the same time,” he added.
A storage tank at an oil refinery operated by Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. in Mumbai, India, Friday, April 4, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Ratings agency Moody’s said India is unlikely to abandon Russian oil entirely given the potential economic impact of doing so, including higher manufacturing costs and higher consumer prices.
Moody’s rating agency commented on Tuesday that “although India has reduced its crude oil purchases from Russia in recent months, it is unlikely to stop all purchases immediately, which could undermine India’s economic growth.”
“Given that India is one of the world’s largest oil importers, a complete shift to non-Russian oil could also lead to tighter supplies elsewhere, higher prices and lead to higher inflation.”
