Can India really stop buying oil from Russia?
India Today
President Donald Trump claimed that India had vowed to stop buying oil from Russia. In recent years, Russia emerged as one of the key sources of crude for India. Here we analyse if it is feasible for India to end oil imports from Russia.
Indians mostly knew the desert countries in West Asia as the source of the oil their vehicles ran on. It was only recently, after 2022, to be more accurate, that Russia started to be associated with oil imports to India. However, India-Russia oil ties could be on a slippery slope, given the US sanctions and President Donald Trump's claims. We aren't getting into whether India should cut Russian oil imports. But can India really cut oil imports from Russia, which has become one of New Delhi's biggest crude sources? Stay on and we will give you a straight answer.
India and Russia have maintained a strategic partnership spanning more than 50 years, with ties dating back to the Soviet era. Though we have imported arms and defence hardware from Russia for decades, Moscow emerged as a major crude oil supplier for New Delhi primarily after sanctions on Moscow after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Import volumes surged to massive levels, peaking at over 2 million barrels per day in mid-2025, and it came at heavily discounted rates from Moscow. As Trump on Sunday declared that the India-US trade deal had been finalised, he claimed New Delhi had vowed to cur Russian oil purchases. But experts are weighing in on whether India can truly diversify its crude imports at such a vast scale.
India imports around 88% of the crude oil it consumes. Russian crude became a major source due to discounted prices following Western sanctions on Moscow. But data from analytics firm Kpler shows India's Russian crude imports started dipping after the US imposed 50% tariffs, which included 25% for trading with Russia, on nearly all goods in August 2025. India's imports of Russian oil dipped to 1.215 million barrels per day (bpd) in January from over 2 million bpd in mid-2025.
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