US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “agreed to end the purchase of Russian oil”. He said that under the India-US trade deal, India will buy much more oil from “the United States and potentially from Venezuela”.
Trump also announced a reduction in tariffs on Indian goods from 25% to 18%. The US imposed a 25% tariff as a penalty, on top of the 25% reciprocal tariff, against India for buying Russian oil amid the Ukraine war.
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Here’s what we know so far:
Trump said India will buy Venezuelan oil
A few days ago, Trump said that India “will buy Venezuelan oil, not buy it from Iran.” He made the claim while answering a question about China during an interview aboard Air Force One. However, India is yet to confirm this.
What India has said about buying Russian oil over the years
Last week, Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said in an interview that India’s imports of Russian oil are expected to continue to decline.
The world’s third largest consumer of fuel is trying to diversify its suppliers, the minister told Bloomberg TV last Tuesday. He noted that the country is now in a position to diversify its oil suppliers and currently buys from 41 countries.
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“The Indian government has not been given any mandate to buy Russian oil and the companies are making their own decisions,” Hardeep Singh Puri told the media.
He said supplies from Russia had already fallen to 1.3 million barrels a day from an average of 1.8 million barrels last year. “There is a downward trend,” Puri said. He added: “These are market-driven conditions.”
In August last year, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also said, “…We are not the biggest buyers of Russian oil, that is China. We are not the biggest buyers of LNG, that is the European Union.”
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“We are not the country that has the biggest trade increase with Russia after 2022; I think there are some countries in the south,” Jaishankar said during a joint press briefing with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on the 21st.
Responding to Western criticism, he said: “We are a country where the Americans have been saying for the last several years that we should do everything to stabilize the world energy market, including buying oil from Russia.”
“By the way, we are also buying oil from the US and that amount has increased. So frankly, we are very confused by the logic of the argument that you were talking about…,” the minister said.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin in China for a regional summit.
How much does India import from Russia?
India has become the largest buyer of Russian marine oil. At its peak, India was buying more than 2 million barrels of Russian oil a day, Bloomberg reported.
Daily flows fell to around 1.2 million barrels in January 2026, according to Kpler data.
According to Bloomberg, officials at a major industry event last week estimated that imports could fall further to 800,000 barrels to 1 million barrels per day in the coming months, a level that could be considered achievable for India and acceptable for the US.
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“About half of that total would go to Nayara Energy, a plant partly owned by sanctioned Russian producer Rosneft PJSC, with the balance split among others,” the report added.
Meanwhile, a European think tank said in early January that India had imported about 144 billion euros worth of oil from Russia since the start of the Ukraine war.
It claimed that Russia supplies about 35 percent of all the oil that India imports, ahead of new sanctions imposed by the US on two of Russia’s top oil exporters, Rosneft and Lukoil, which will take effect from November 22, 2025.
However, Russia’s share of Indian oil purchases has since fallen to less than 25 percent and may fall further as the primary buyer, Reliance Industries, has shied away from Russian oil.
(With input from agencies)
