Russia said on Tuesday it has not heard from India on any move to halt oil purchases, after US President Donald Trump claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian crude.

“We have not heard any statement from India about it curbing oil purchases from Russia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We respect bilateral relations between the US and India. But we attach no less importance to the development of an advanced strategic partnership between Russia and India.”

“This is most important to us,” he said, “and we intend to further develop our bilateral relations with Delhi.

On Monday, Trump, after a phone conversation with Prime Minister Modi, announced a trade deal with India. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the two leaders talked about trade and “ending the war with Russia and Ukraine.”

“He (Modi) agreed to stop buying Russian oil and buy a lot more from the United States and, potentially, from Venezuela,” the US president said, adding that this would help “end the war in Ukraine, which is going on right now, with thousands of people dying every week.”

While India has confirmed the trade deal with the US, it has not issued any public statement on ending purchases of Russian crude. Government sources told India Today that New Delhi “will continue to buy crude from anywhere in the world where there are no sanctions, depending on the market rates. It did not buy from Venezuela when there were sanctions. Now that the sanctions have been lifted, it will buy from there.”

India was not traditionally a major importer of Russian crude, but it became one of Moscow’s key buyers after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump’s efforts to restrict the flow of oil revenue from Russia have been seen as tightening supply lines to India, though not stopping them entirely.

Trump has also made similar claims before. In October last year, he said Modi agreed to end purchases of Russian oil, but Indian refineries continued to buy crude at a discount. Later that month, the US imposed sanctions on Russia’s top oil producers, Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJSC.

(With contributions from Reuters)