{"id":317781,"date":"2025-08-04T18:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/317781\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T18:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T18:13:11","slug":"trumps-demand-that-india-stop-buying-russian-oil-puts-modi-in-tight-spot-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/317781\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s demand that India stop buying Russian oil puts Modi in tight spot | India"},"content":{"rendered":"

The relationship between India and the US is facing one of its most significant challenges in decades, as the Trump administration doubles down on its demands that India stop buying Russian oil or face punitive tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US president, Donald Trump<\/a>, has refused to cut tariffs on Indian exports to the US, as he has for other countries, and on Monday said he would significantly raise them over its purchases of cheap Russian oil, which now account for one-third of its imported oil.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t care how many people in Ukraine<\/a> are being killed by the Russian War Machine,\u201d he said in a post to his Truth Social network, also accusing India of selling Russian oil \u201con the Open Market for big profits\u201d. In a previous social media tirade last week, he said of Russia and India: \u201cThey can take their dead economies down together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday at the weekend, his hardline deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, did not hold back as he took direct aim at India, stating that Trump had made it clear \u201cit is not acceptable for India to continue financing this [Ukraine] war by purchasing the oil from Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

The whiplash the last few days have caused in the corridors of New Delhi is palpable. It was only February when India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi<\/a>, was one of the first world leaders to be hosted by Trump and the two men embraced each other and hailed their \u201cgreat friendship\u201d. Indian officials were adamant that Russia had not even come up in trade negotiations until Trump\u2019s public outburst.<\/p>\n

India had come to view the US as one of its strongest and most reliable partners, united by the bonhomie between its leaders and growing cooperation on everything from regional security and defence to bilateral trade, intelligence, technology and an increasingly powerful Indian diaspora in the US.<\/p>\n

A united geopolitical ambition to counterbalance the power of China had only brought them further together under recent presidents.<\/p>\n

Yet it did not go unnoticed by India that China \u2013 the other big buyer of sanctioned Russian oil, which also has leverage over the US in the form of rare earths \u2013 has not received similar threats, and neither has Turkey.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s moves have been met with a frosty, if not outright defiant, reception among Indian officials. After Trump told reporters he had heard India would \u201cno longer\u201d be buying Russian oil, he was swiftly contradicted by Indian officials over the weekend<\/a>, who said there would be no change in policy.<\/p>\n

Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin at a Brics summit in 2024. \u2018India and Russia have a steady and time-tested partnership,\u2019 India\u2019s foreign ministry spokesperson said. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Under India\u2019s \u201cnon-alignment\u201d foreign policy it has maintained a close partnership with Russia over decades while strengthening ties with the US; a position largely tolerated by Washington and reiterated by Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson for India\u2019s foreign ministry, following Trump\u2019s threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur bilateral relationships with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country,\u201d said Jaiswal. \u201cIndia and Russia have a steady and time-tested partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a column in the Indian Express, Shyam Saran, a former Indian foreign secretary, did not mince his words. \u201cDonald Trump was supposed to be good for India in his second presidency,\u201d he said. \u201cHe has turned out to be a nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saran was among those who called for India to follow the example of China and Brazil and stand up to Trump. He insisted that although there would be \u201cpain in resisting Trump \u2026 we should be prepared to endure it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSubmitting to his exaggerated demands, which are now political as well as economic, would severely undermine India\u2019s national interests,\u201d said Saran. \u201cWe cannot give any country a veto over which countries India should or should not partner with.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is widely agreed among analysts that Modi has been put in an unenviable position by Trump; either acquiesce to Trump\u2019s demands and see loss of face domestically or reject them and face sky-high tariffs \u2013 and possibly other punitive actions \u2013 that would cripple the Indian economy.<\/p>\n

The Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta said India was not the exception in mistakenly thinking that \u201cTrump is purely transactional and that by placating him, pandering to his ego and giving him good headlines, it will be enough to make him quietly dial back\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the major sticking points for Modi, he said, was the highly public nature of Trump\u2019s threats, which had complicated the possibility of backdoor negotiations over India quietly moving away from buying Russian oil and arms.<\/p>\n

He said Trump had already \u201cfrankly humiliated the Indian prime minister\u201d over the recent India-Pakistan conflict in May, where Trump had publicly taken the credit for negotiating a ceasefire \u2013 a position vehemently denied by the Modi government in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s recent embrace of Pakistan<\/a>, signing deals with India\u2019s enemy on cryptocurrency, mining and oil \u2013 and even having the chagrin to suggest India may one day buy Pakistani oil \u2013 as well as hosting the Pakistan army chief for lunch in the White House, had only added insult to injury.<\/p>\n

Mehta said suspicions towards the US in New Delhi now resembled those of 1971, when President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent warships to India in what is considered one of the lowest points of the US-India relationship. \u201cThe damage is already done,\u201d said Mehta. \u201cNo matter what deal they come to now, distrust of the US is only going to continue to skyrocket.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The relationship between India and the US is facing one of its most significant challenges in decades, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-317781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114971856415028263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}