President Vladimir Putin is touching down in India this week. It’s his first trip since the Ukraine invasion. A rare visit, yes, but it completely underscores the reality here: the defense and energy ties with Moscow are deep. They go way back to the Soviet era
The thing is... this trip is happening while New Delhi is trying to nail down a major trade deal with Washington. It’s a mess.
Putin needs this, let’s be real. He wants to show the world—especially the West—that Moscow still has strong, huge markets to trade with. For India? It’s a chance to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still able to chart an independent path. This whole push to deepen ties with “middle powers” like Russia, or Japan, or the UAE—that’s India’s play. Pramit Pal Chaudhuri said it: the U.S. is getting transactional. India has to protect its flanks.
The US Pressure Point
The U.S., specifically under Trump, is not making this easy.
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Tariffs: Trump doubled India’s tariffs to a whopping 50 per cent. That happened. And it followed India buying Russian oil. It was explicitly to punish that trade.
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Sanctions: The US sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s biggest oil producers. That happened. And then Russian shipments to India dropped dramatically, even with huge discounts on Urals crude.
Modi’s government is right in the middle of trade talks with the Trump administration. They’re close to a deal. But a huge show of India-Russia closeness? That could make the deal feel a lot more distant. That’s the tension.
The Oil and Weapons Hook
Both countries are officially talking trade, sure. But the real core issues—oil and defense—are what put India right in the crosshairs of the US.
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Oil Trade: This is huge for the Kremlin’s revenue. India needs cheap crude, desperately, for its import bill. But it needs to avoid those punishing US tariffs and sanctions, too. India wasn’t a big Russian oil buyer historically. That changed after 2022. Discounted Russian crude was available. India became the largest buyer of seaborne Russian crude. And now? They are seeing steep discounts—as much as 7 a barrel below Brent for January delivery. That’s the lowest price in at least two years. That’s a loss Putin will try to reverse.
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Defense: Russia is still India’s largest military hardware supplier. India is keen to discuss the purchase of Su-57 fighter jets and the S-500 missile shield. India already has over 200 Russian jets. Those air-defense systems? They were used during the May clash with Pakistan. Urgency is high. Any new sale, though, has to somehow navigate the mess of sanctions and Russia’s own wartime demand. It’s complicated.
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Beyond the Conflict
Putin praised ties with India and China on the eve of the visit. He pledged to boost relations to a “qualitatively new level.” He’s talking trade with Modi—specifically “increasing the import of Indian goods into our market.”
Russia is cut off from a lot of European markets. They’re looking for alternatives. Tatiana Shaumyan put it simply: the idea is to get more Indian goods and pay for them with the rupees Russia earns from selling oil. They’re trying to bypass the dollar system.
India is looking for market access. Marine products, agricultural goods—that was floated in a briefing. There’s even a pact expected for Indian workers traveling to Russia for jobs.
They’re talking about raising bilateral trade from 68 billion to 100 billion by 2030. That’s the target. And they want to improve their own currency settlement systems. But breaking into the Russian market? It won’t be easy, you know. Local and Chinese goods are everywhere. The list of viable Indian products is “quite small.” It’s an ongoing negotiation. The stakes are just massive.
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