United States President Donald Trump’s further 25 % tariff on India for its imports from Russia, saying it’s serving to gasoline Russia’s battle in Ukraine, has put the South Asian nation within the highest tier of tariffed nations to date.
Whereas New Delhi and Moscow are previous strategic companions with a relationship courting to the Chilly Battle period, and Russia is a significant provider of India’s defence arsenal, Trump’s ire has predominantly been targeted on the current surge in India’s oil imports from its previous ally.
India was “Russia’s largest purchaser of ENERGY, together with China, at a time when everybody desires Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE – ALL THINGS NOT GOOD!” Trump posted on his Fact Social platform on July 30.
On August 19, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instructed CNBC that “a few of the richest households in India” had been the most important beneficiaries of those imports.
The most important importer in India of Russian crude oil has been Reliance Industries (RIL), which is led by Asia’s richest particular person, Mukesh Ambani.
Russian crude comprised a mere 3 % of RIL’s Jamnagar refinery’s complete crude imports in 2021. Because the battle in Ukraine, it has shot as much as a mean of fifty % in 2025, in accordance with knowledge from the Centre for Analysis on Vitality and Clear Air (CREA) in Amsterdam.
Within the first seven months of 2025, the Jamnagar refinery has imported 18.3 million tonnes of crude oil from Russia, a 64 % year-on-year enhance, and value $8.7bn. RIL’s imports from Russia within the first seven months of 2025 are solely 12 % decrease than the overall imports in 2024, CREA mentioned. Its methodology will be discovered here.
That shift has been pushed by the worth cap on Russian oil merchandise that kicked in on February 5, 2023, Vaibhav Raghunandan, a European Union-Russia analyst at CREA, instructed Al Jazeera.
“The preliminary objective of the worth cap was to curtail Russian revenues, whereas additionally making certain safety of provide globally,” mentioned Raghunandan. “A lowered worth cap is technically alleged to make this oil extra enticing for international locations like India and China, however prohibit Russian revenues.”
RIL didn’t reply to an in depth record of questions from Al Jazeera.
Nevertheless, a stagnation of the extent of the worth cap – it has been at $60 for greater than three years now – and a scarcity of enforcement have blunted its impact, Raghunandan added.
As a substitute, a shadow fleet – a fleet of tons of of vessels operated by Russia to evade policing of its exports – has helped be certain that consumers paid increased than the worth cap. As lately as January, roughly 83 % of Russian crude was being transported by way of these vessels, as per CREA knowledge. In June, that was all the way down to 59 %.
CREA tracked RIL’s Russian crude oil imports at its Jamnagar refinery and exports, from 2021 to the tip of final month, for Al Jazeera.
It discovered that the Jamnagar refinery has exported $85.9bn of refined merchandise globally from February 2023 until final month. An estimated 42 % ($36bn) of these exports have gone to international locations sanctioning Russia.
A 3rd of their complete exports, price 17 billion euros ($19.7bn), have been to the EU and $6.3bn of oil merchandise to the US, an estimated $2.3bn of which had been processed from Russian crude.
The US is the fourth-biggest importer amongst particular person international locations, in worth phrases, from this refinery because the worth caps got here into impact, topped solely by the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Singapore. In quantity, the US is the most important importer from the Jamnagar refinery, having imported 8.4 million tonnes of oil merchandise because the worth caps until the tip of July 2025.
In 2025, the US imported $1.4bn of oil merchandise from the refinery, a 14 % year-on-year enhance, the third most of any nation globally.
US imports from Jamnagar consist primarily of mixing parts (64 %), petrol (14 %) and gasoline oils (13 %).
After RIL, Nayara Vitality, which is majority-owned by Russian corporations, together with Rosneft, the state-owned oil and gasoline large, has been a giant importer of Russian crude. Its Vadinar refinery, the second-largest personal refinery in India after Jamnagar, acquired, on common, 66 % of its complete crude imports this yr from Russia.
By way of precise volumes, Nayara’s Russian imports quantity to a 3rd of what Reliance imports from Russia for its Jamnagar refinery, CREA mentioned.
‘A complete sham’
Analysts say it could be simplistic to recommend that India is bearing the price of the extra tariffs only for the advantage of one firm.
“It appears to me that even when many of the income went to Reliance, the Indian authorities has discovered it handy to proceed this commerce with Russia, each as a result of the cheaper oil imports helped with India’s present account deficit and in addition helped ship a message of non-alignment,” mentioned Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow on the Heart for a New American Safety, the place she focuses on the interlinkages between economics, finance and safety points.
India has traditionally sought to reveal strategic independence from main powers, refusing to align formally even throughout the Chilly Battle with both the US or the Soviet Union.
Ajay Srivastava, founding father of the Delhi-based International Commerce Analysis Initiative, instructed Al Jazeera that Trump’s tariff for India’s import of Russian oil was “a complete sham”.
“The entire thing of placing tariffs is a sham once they haven’t known as out the most important importer of Russian oil that’s China,” Srivastava mentioned, including that Trump was “scared to name out China … If tomorrow Trump and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin come to an settlement [over Ukraine], US will discover one other pretext to place tariffs on India” because the tariffs had been pushed by different points together with Trump’s frustrations over India not giving into US commerce calls for.
Reliance, he mentioned, might have profited from the decrease crude costs for Russian oil, and the one cause that’s beneath scrutiny is that it’s a personal agency, and it’s human nature to query the rich.
Because the worth cap kicked in and until the tip of final month, 38 % of US imports of mixing parts, 4 % of jet gasoline imports and a pair of % of petrol imports have come from the Jamnagar refinery.
Analysts predict some modifications within the offing. The EU has put in place a ban on imports of refined petroleum processed from Russian crude, a “important coverage change”, mentioned CREA’s Raghunandan, including that “if enforced strongly, will probably be massively impactful”. The ban is ready to start in January.
Greater than half of RIL’s jet gasoline exports have been to the EU, and “shedding this market would due to this fact affect their revenues from some merchandise heavier than others. However general, it should create a big rethink for his or her export technique”, he mentioned.
However RIL in December additionally signed a 10-year contract with Rosneft, and it’s not clear how that will play out with the sanctions.
