India said it was being “targeted” by the U.S. and the European Union over its imports of Russian oil after U.S. President Donald Trump in an overnight social media post threatened New Delhi with much steeper tariffs.
India began importing oil from Russia only after traditional supplies were diverted to Europe following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement late Monday.
The ministry called out the EU and the U.S. saying, “it is revealing that the very nations criticizing India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia. Unlike our case, such trade is not even a vital national compulsion [for them].”
The EU’s bilateral trade with Russia stood at 67.5 billion euros ($78.1 billion) in 2024, while its services trade in 2023 was at 17.2 billion euros, according to European Commission data. Citing that data, India said the bloc’s trade was “significantly more” than India’s total trade with Russia.
Data from the Indian embassy in Moscow showed bilateral trade between New Delhi and Moscow reached a record $68.7 billion for the year ended March 2025, nearly 5.8 times higher than the pre-pandemic trade of $10.1 billion.
