White House trade adviser Peter Navarro says India’s purchases of Russian crude oil are funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and have to stop, as Washington ramps up pressure on New Delhi to cut off its energy imports from Russia.
“India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times on Monday.
He added that India’s dependence on Russian crude is “opportunistic and deeply corrosive of the world’s efforts to isolate Putin’s war economy”.
India is the second-largest buyer of Russian oil, after China, and more than 30 percent of its fuel is sourced from Moscow, providing revenue to the Kremlin amid Western sanctions.
In the beginning of this month, United States President Donald Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Indian goods over the issue, straining US-India ties.
In a speech on the occasion of India’s Independence Day on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck a defiant note, pledging to protect his country’s farmers in the face of high tariffs slapped by the Trump administration.
“Modi will stand like a wall against any policy that threatens their interests. India will never compromise when it comes to protecting the interests of our farmers,” he said.
India-Russia ties
India counts Russia among its closest defence partners, with the bulk of its weapons, including the S-400 missile defence system, sourced from Moscow. India has continued to maintain good ties with Russia, with Modi meeting Putin in Moscow amid the Ukraine war.
But New Delhi has been cultivating ties with Washington in the past decades, raising their relations to a strategic level. The two countries have annual bilateral trade of $128bn, but Trump has been pushing to lower the $45bn deficit in India’s favour.
The US also saw India as a bulwark against rising China, but the recent actions by the Trump administration seem to have pushed India to mend ties with its rival, China.
Indian Prime Minister Modi is set to travel to China at the end of the month, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is arriving in India on Monday on a two-day trip, for talks on the disputed border between the two countries.
In the opinion piece on Monday, the White House adviser pointed out that India is “cozying up” to Russia and China. “If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one,” Navarro wrote.
The adviser also said it was risky to transfer cutting-edge US military capabilities to India as New Delhi’s ties to China and Russia deepen.
Navarro is the second senior Trump administration official to accuse India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House, in the first week of August said that New Delhi’s purchase of Russia crude was “not acceptable”.
“What he (Trump) said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” Miller, one of Trump’s most influential aides, said in an interview with Fox News.
‘Unfairly singled out’
India’s Foreign Ministry has said the country is being ‘unfairly’ singled out for buying Russian oil while the US and European Union continue to buy goods from Russia.
The EU and US trade much more with Russia than India does – New Delhi’s contention for being singled out – although this trade has dipped significantly since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
According to the EU, its total trade with Russia was worth 67.5 billion euros ($77.9bn) in 2024, a fall from 257.5 billion euros ($297.4bn) in 2021.
The bloc also continues to buy Russian gas – $105.6bn for gas imports since the war began – an amount equivalent to 75 percent of Russia’s 2024 military budget, according to the Finnish think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Total Russia-US trade in 2024, meanwhile, stood at $5.2bn, according to the US Trade Representative’s office – though significantly down from 2021, when it stood at $36bn.
India and the US have also been haggling for months to agree on a free trade agreement, with Trump accusing New Delhi of denying access to US goods by imposing high tariffs.
Meanwhile, a planned visit by US trade negotiators to New Delhi from August 25 to 29 has been called off, a source told the Reuters news agency, delaying talks on a proposed trade agreement meant to be a relief from additional US tariffs on Indian goods.
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