Peter Navarro
Aug 18, 2025
The Hill
Here’s how the India-Russia oil mathematics works. American consumers buy Indian goods. India uses those dollars to buy discounted Russian crude. That Russian crude is refined and resold around the world by Indian profiteers in league with silent Russian partners — while Russia pockets hard currency to fund its war machine in Ukraine.
As Russia continues to hammer Ukraine, helped by India’s financial support, American (and European) taxpayers are then forced to spend tens of billions more to help Ukraine’s defence. Meanwhile, India keeps slamming the door on American exports through high tariffs and trade barriers. More than 300,000 soldiers and civilians have been killed, while Nato’s eastern flank grows more exposed and the west foots the bill for India’s oil laundering.
India imposes some of the highest average tariffs in the world, along with a dense web of non-tariff barriers that punish American workers and businesses. As a result, the US runs a massive trade deficit with India — nearing $50bn annually. And here’s the kicker: India is using those US trade dollars to buy Russian oil.
Importantly, before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian oil made up less than 1 per cent of India’s crude imports. Since then, daily imports have soared to more than 1.5mn barrels — more than 30 per cent of India’s total.
To be clear, this surge has not been driven by domestic oil consumption needs. Rather, what really drives this trade is profiteering by India’s Big Oil lobby. Refining companies have turned India into a massive refining hub for discounted Russian crude.
The refiners buy oil at a steep discount, process it, and then export refined fuels to Europe, Africa, and Asia — all the while shielding India from sanctions scrutiny under the pretence of neutrality.
The refining trade is large — India exports more than a million barrels per day in refined petroleum products, equivalent to over half the volume of crude it imports from Russia. The proceeds flow to India’s politically connected energy titans, and in turn, into Vladimir Putin’s war chest.
India’s dependence on Russian crude is opportunistic and deeply corrosive of the world’s efforts to isolate Putin’s war economy. In effect, India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs.