US President Donald Trump announced that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has agreed to halt India's purchases of Russian oil. The United States is seeking to put economic pressure on the Kremlin to end the war in Ukraine, with Trump recently claiming that Russian energy buyers, including China and India, are the main financiers of the war.
Trump said he had received assurances from Modi that India would stop its purchases"very shortly," which he called a "big achievement," the BBC reports. He added that India could not immediately stop oil shipments, and that the transition would be"a bit of a nerve-wracking process, but the process will be over soon."
Responding to Trump's remarks, an Indian government spokesman said that talks were"ongoing" with the US administration, which had"expressed interest in deepening energy cooperation with India." The spokesman said that "our priority is to protect the interests of Indian consumers in a volatile energy situation."
The US president also said he now had to get China “to do the same.” In response, a Chinese government spokesman said they were engaging in “normal, legitimate economic, trade and energy cooperation” with countries around the world, “including Russia.” A Kremlin official said that preventing countries from buying Russian crude “would violate the fundamental principles of free trade.”
The Trump administration also wants Japan to stop importing oil and gas from Russia, and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he conveyed this “expectation” to visiting Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato on Wednesday.
In parallel with the expectations of the American president, the European Union is also taking an increasingly decisive stance against Russian energy imports. Two committees of the EP have just decided that they can ban Russian gas and oil exports in the EU by the end of next year, and thus finance the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 billion forints went from Hungary to Russia this year for gas and oil – and Péter Szijjártó was even proud of this.
