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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed his country’s growing energy ties with Russia at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, defying punitive tariffs levied on New Delhi by the US over its purchases of discounted Russian oil.
At a meeting on the sidelines of a regional summit in China on Monday, Modi told Putin that “even in the most difficult circumstances India and Russia have walked together, shoulder to shoulder. Our close co-operation is important not just to our two countries but for global peace, stability and prosperity.”
India’s foreign ministry said the two leaders had “discussed bilateral co-operation, including in the economic, financial and energy sectors and expressed satisfaction with the sustained growth in bilateral ties in these areas”.
US President Donald Trump last week doubled US tariffs on most Indian imports to 50 per cent, saying the move was a response to New Delhi’s purchases of discounted Russian oil since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin had spoken one-on-one with Modi for an hour in the Russian president’s limousine before the two leaders held talks together with their delegations. It was their first meeting in 2025.
After the encounter on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation security forum summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin, Modi shared a photo of himself and Putin in the back seat of the car. “Conversations with him are always insightful,” Modi wrote in a post on social media site X.
The Kremlin quoted Putin as saying trade and economic co-operation between Russia and India were “generally showing positive dynamics” against the backdrop of their “friendly, trusting” relations.
India has become Moscow’s largest buyer of seaborne crude oil, importing nearly $140bn worth since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Indian government data shows.
Much of that supply is processed by Indian refiners into petrol and diesel and sold on domestic and international markets.
Western countries, including the US, encouraged the trade, which helped maintain global market prices, as long as the price India paid for the crude remained below the G7 price cap set to limit Russian revenues.
But Trump administration officials have since accused Indian companies of being “profiteers” of Moscow’s war, deepening a rift between Washington and New Delhi.
“Is it clear that for India, Russian oil is here to stay,” said Amit Bhandari, a senior fellow for energy at Gateway House, a Mumbai-based think-tank, “Russia is where the oil is.”
Modi and Putin had already spoken twice by phone since Trump first threatened India with a 50 per cent tariff early last month. Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar and national security adviser Ajit Doval have also met Putin in Moscow, while the Russian president is expected to visit India later this year.
Moscow’s significance to New Delhi is underpinned by strategic relations that date back to the cold war and Russia is the top international supplier of weapons to India. India and China have also moved to patch up ties badly damaged by a 2020 border clash.
New Delhi has struck a defiant tone in the face of Trump’s tariff threats, with the foreign ministry saying “the targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable”.
