Earlier this week, Trump had first made his assertions. However, the MEA rejected his claims and said it has been a policy of the government to safeguard the interests of Indian consumers in a “volatile energy scenario”.
US President Donald Trump on Friday (local time) repeated his claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ‘assured’ him that India would stop procuring Russian oil, even after New Delhi refuted his assertion. Trump, in a bilateral lunch with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, even claimed that India has vastly reduced its Russian oil imports and will stop buying it completely.ย ย
Trump, although, defended Hungary for continuing its imports of Russian oil.
“India is not going to be buying Russian oil anymore, and Hungary is sort of stuck because they have one pipeline that’s been there for years, and they’re inland; they don’t have sea, and I spoke with their leader… but India will not be buying oil from Russia,” Trump said. “They already de-escalated and more or less stopped. They are pulling back. They bought about 38 per cent of the oil, and they wouldn’t be doing it anymore.”
Trump’s claim and India’s rejection
Earlier this week, Trump had first made his assertions. However, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) rejected his claims and said it has been a policy of the government to safeguard the interests of Indian consumers in a “volatile energy scenario”. Talking about India’s trade with the United States, the MEA said the Trump administration has shown interest in deepening energy cooperation with India and discussions are ongoing over it.
“Ensuring stable energy prices and secured supplies have been the twin goals of our energy policy,” MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. “This includes broad-basing our energy sourcing and diversifying as appropriate to meet market conditions.”
The West, particularly the US, has been critical of India’s Russian oil imports, claiming that it is fueling the war in Ukraine. However, all senior Indian ministers, including External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, have defended the move, saying the government will always protect the country’s national interest.
Trump’s false claims?
Though Trump has claimed that there is reduction in India’s Russian oil imports, according to a data released by Kpler, New Delhi’s crude oil imports from Moscow strengthened in the first half of October, reversing a three-month slide in arrivals seen during July-September. Imports from Russia slid from over 2 million barrels per day in June to 1.6 million bpd in September, the report claimed.ย
Sumit Ritolia, Lead Research Analyst (Refining & Modelling) at Kpler, believes Trump’s statement was more likely pressure tactics linked to trade negotiations rather than a reflection of an imminent policy change. “Russian barrels remain deeply embedded in India’s energy system for economic, contractual, and strategic reasons,” he said, as reported by news agency PTI.ย
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