Donald Trump has demanded India stop buying Vladimir Putin’s oil or face punishing tariffs. The problem for Prime Minister Narendra Modi is there may be no easy way to do it.
After years of his country bingeing on cheap Russian crude, India’s prime minister faces a geopolitical dilemma as well as a practical challenge should he seek to re-engineer the energy supply mix of the world’s third-biggest oil importer.
India buys about 90 per cent of its crude oil from overseas and has been the biggest market for Russian seaborne crude since 2023, according to ship tracking data compiled by Kpler. India imports about 5mn barrels of oil a day, of which 2mn come from Russia.