External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar.
Credit: Reuters photo
New Delhi: The arguments put forward by President Donald Trump’s administration for imposing additional duty on India’s exports to the United States for the South Asian nation’s oil imports from Russia have perplexed New Delhi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in Moscow, where he called on President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
“We believe that relations between India and Russia have been among the steadiest of the major relationships in the world after the Second World War,” Jaishankar said, as he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke to journalists after a meeting in Moscow.
“Geo-political convergence, leadership contacts and popular sentiment remain its key drivers,” he said.
The external affairs minister said that the US had asked India in the past few years to do whatever it could to stabilise the international energy market, including by buying oil from Russia.
“We are a country where, actually, the Americans have said for the last few years that we should do everything to stabilise the oil energy market, including buying oil from Russia,” he said. He noted that India was not the largest buyer of Russian oil or Liquefied Natural Gas, and lagged behind China and Europe.
“We also buy oil from America, and that amount is increasing,” Jaishankar said in response to a query by journalists on Thursday, adding: “So, quite honestly, we are very perplexed by the logic of the (US) arguments.”
With no breakthrough yet on the negotiations on the proposed trade deal between New Delhi and Washington, D.C., Trump had on July 30 announced a 25 per cent tariff on all goods exported by India to the US on July 30.
He had also slammed New Delhi for buying defence hardware and energy from Russia, despite the former Soviet Union nation’s special military operations in Ukraine.
He followed it up on July 31 by calling the economies of India and Russia ‘dead’.
He said on August 1 that he had heard that India would take a “good step” and stop buying crude oil from Russia. New Delhi, however, did not confirm or deny any move on its part to stop buying hydrocarbons from Russia. He moved to levy on August 6 an additional 25 per cent on all US imports from India, thus totalling the tariff at 50 per cent.
Trump’s senior advisor on trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, recently said that India had now become a major refining hub for oil from Russia, even as it claimed neutrality on the issue of the Russia-Ukraine conflict to avoid sanctions.
He said that India exported over one million barrels of refined products every day, and this was more than half the amount of crude it imported from Russia.
“Honoured to call on President Putin at the Kremlin today. Conveyed the warm greetings of President Droupadi Murmu & (and) Prime Minister @narendramodi,” Jaishankar posted on X after meeting the Russian president in the Kremlin.
His meetings with Lavrov and Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov during his stay in Moscow set the stage for Putin’s visit to New Delhi for the annual summit with Modi by the end of this year. Lavrov may also visit New Delhi soon.
India’s bilateral trade with Russia in goods increased more than five-fold from $13 billion in 2021 to $68 billion in 2024-25. Trade imbalance increased from $6.6 billion to $58.9 billion. India’s purchase of oil from Russia rose from 2.1% of its total imports in 2021-22 to 35.10 per cent in 2024-25.