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United States President Donald Trump has claimed that India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil, as Washington seeks to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine by cutting off the Kremlin’s vital energy revenues. Trump had said he would try to persuade China to do the same.

The US president told reporters on Wednesday that he had received assurances from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India would halt its oil purchases “within a short period of time”. India and China are the two biggest buyers of Russian seaborne crude exports.

Trump has sought to leverage his ongoing trade negotiations with New Delhi to pressure India over Russian oil. And, in August, he used India’s continuing imports of Russian oil as a pretext to impose additional trade tariffs on New Delhi. But Modi has so far refused to back down. For months, Indian officials have defended purchases of Russian energy as vital for India’s national security.

A move by India now to stop its imports would signal a major shift by one of Moscow’s top energy customers, and could undermine Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine.

Why has Russian oil been a bone of contention between India and the US?

Citing India’s continued imports of Russian oil, Trump slapped an additional 25 percent trade tariff on New Delhi in August – bringing tariffs to a total 50 percent. He did not instigate similar punitive actions against China, which remains the largest importer of Russian oil, however.

China imported a record 109 million tonnes of Russian crude last year, representing nearly 20 percent of its total energy imports, according to Chinese customs data. India, by contrast, imported 88 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024.

New Delhi has, therefore, accused Washington of selectively targeting India in its latest round of tariffs. Some observers argue that Trump’s stance in part reflects frustration with India’s unwillingness to acquiesce to his specific demands in ongoing trade talks.

“India’s longstanding protectionist measures – such as high tariffs for agricultural goods and subsidies on pharmaceuticals – have been a point of friction in US-India trade talks,” Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.

By contrast, Trump has adopted a noticeably softer approach with China, avoiding similar punitive, energy-linked tariffs. Some observers believe he may be biding his time to secure a broader trade deal with Beijing that would include access to China’s rare-earth metals.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to various manufacturing industries, including in the US, from car parts and military technology. China has long dominated the mining and processing of rare earth minerals and currently restricts exports of 12 of them.

The upshot is that “China has much more leverage [than India], as shown by its recent export controls”, explained Garcia Herrero.

The most recent of China’s export restrictions, which require foreign companies to obtain special approvals from Beijing if they wish to purchase certain rare-earth products, were introduced this week, ahead of an expected meeting between Trump and his Chinese counterpart – President Xi Jinping – later this month.

In response to Beijing’s move, Trump has threatened to impose a new 100 percent tariff on Chinese exports from November 1. Still, he said his planned meeting with Xi is expected to go ahead: “I’m going to be there regardless, so I assume we might have it,” he told reporters last Friday.

How reliant is India on Russian energy?

Russia is New Delhi’s largest source of oil. According to Kpler, the shipping analytics company, India imported 4.5 million bpd (barrels per day) of crude in September. Of that, Russian supplies accounted for roughly 1.6 million bpd – or 34 percent of the total.

That represents an eye-watering 2,250 percent increase from January 2022, one month before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in Ukraine. At the time, India was importing just 68,000 bpd of oil from Russia.

Meanwhile, India is the second-largest buyer of Russian energy after China, according to data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). China purchased 47 percent of Russia’s crude exports in September, followed by India at 38 percent.

Why is India buying so much Russian oil now?

In December 2022, several Western nations imposed a $60 price cap on Russian crude oil in a bid to reduce Russia’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine. This forced Moscow to compete more aggressively on prices if buyers wanted access to Western shipping and insurance services.

But cheaper Russian oil helped narrow New Delhi’s current account deficit, which fell by 65 percent in 2023-2024 compared to the previous year. Elsewhere, Reliance Industries (RIL) – now India’s top importer of Russian seaborne crude – became the biggest corporate winner.

In 2021, Russian crude accounted for just 3 percent of imports at Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery, India’s largest private facility. By 2025, that share had surged to around 50 percent, according to CREA.

CREA has also calculated that the Jamnagar refinery exported $85.9bn of refined products globally from February 2022 to July 2025. Incidentally, an estimated 42 percent ($36bn) of that has gone to countries sanctioning Russia.

How has India responded to Trump’s latest claim?

India has not officially confirmed Trump’s claim that it has promised to stop buying Russian oil.

Despite Trump’s punitive tariffs, New Delhi has consistently defended its purchase of Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine. A spokesperson for India’s External Affairs Ministry, Shri Randhir Jaiswal, reiterated that stance on Thursday. But he also hinted that India could look to diversify its import base.

In an official statement, he said: “Ensuring stable energy prices and secured supplies have been the twin goals of our energy policy. This includes broad-basing our energy sourcing and diversifying as appropriate.”

He added: “Where the US is concerned, we have for many years sought to expand our energy procurement … The current Administration has shown interest in deepening energy cooperation with India. Discussions are ongoing.”

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has survived two confidence motions, just days after he appointed his new government in time to submit a draft budget to parliament in a bid to end the political turmoil that has gripped the country for months.

A motion sponsored by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and its allies was defeated on Thursday, receiving the backing of just 144 lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly.

Just moments before, a motion tabled by far-left France Unbowed gained support from 271 lawmakers, 18 short of the 289 needed for a majority.

The votes followed Lecornu’s decision Tuesday to back suspending a divisive 2023 pension reform, in a bid to keep his cabinet afloat long enough to pass the much-needed 2026 austerity budget by the end of this year.

The leftist Socialist Party (PS) had threatened to vote to topple the premier if he did not move to freeze the reform that would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

After the motions failed to pass, PS lawmaker Laurent Baumel warned that sparing the premier “was in no way a pact” for the future, urging “new concessions” in the looming budget talks.

Yael Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly and an ally of Macron, had a more positive outlook following the votes.

“I am pleased to see that today there is a majority in the National Assembly that is operating in this spirit: Work, the search for compromise, the best possible effort.”

Lecornu, who at the time of his first appointment last month was France‘s fifth prime minister in less than two years, must now steer a cost-cutting budget through a deeply divided parliament before the end of the year, in what is expected to be a bruising fight.

The confidence votes followed a dramatic two weeks in French politics.

This vote marks a reprieve, “but he [Lecornu] is far from out of the woods yet because he has a very challenging few weeks ahead of him,” said Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris.

Lecornu now “has to try to push through a budget … that is going to please all sides of the House and for now, he’s dealing with a government that has no majority so he’s relying on [individual] MPs”, said Butler.

“But as we’ve seen, there are MPs who are on the far-right, the far-left and in between who simply want to bring him down, as they say his policies are simply continuations of the French president. They are calling for new elections and they certainly don’t want to see Lecornu succeed.”

Lecornu resigned last Monday after criticism of his first cabinet, only to be reappointed days later and unveil a reshuffled team in time to submit a draft budget to parliament.

Under pressure from the European Union to rein in its deficit and debt, France faces an uphill battle over cost-cutting measures that felled Lecornu’s two predecessors.

France’s debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio is the EU’s third-highest after Greece and Italy, and is close to twice the bloc’s 60 percent ceiling.

Lecornu has pledged not to invoke a constitutional tool used to push through every budget without a vote since 2022 and pledged to put all bills to debate.

“The government will make suggestions, we will debate, and you will vote,” the 39-year-old Macron loyalist emphasised in a speech to lawmakers Tuesday.

But the opposition has challenged his optimism.

Le Pen accused lawmakers of granting Lecornu a reprieve out of “terror of elections”, saying she was waiting with “growing impatience” for Parliament’s dissolution.

The far right sees its best chance yet to take power in the 2027 presidential race, when Macron’s second and final term ends.

This vote is “something of a reprieve” for Macron as well, said Butler, as “for the moment at least, his government survives.

“That’s more than we can say of the picture that has been painted here [in France] over the last few months, as we’ve seen one prime minister after another in government collapse.”

If Lecornu’s government were to fall in the coming weeks, “many say Macron will be under pressure to dissolve Parliament and call elections, which would likely favour the far-right, so it’s certainly something the French president would like to avoid,” said Butler.

The political turmoil has also deeply affected Macron’s image both domestically, “where he is very fragile”, and internationally, said Butler, referring to when United States President Donald Trump “poked fun at President Macron” while in Egypt earlier in the week to join other world leaders in signing the Gaza war ceasefire deal.

Hackers took over the PA system at Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania, broadcasting a pro-Palestine message and insults against the leaders of the US and Israel. Similar incidents were reported at three Canadian airports on the same day.

According to Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a South Korea-based religious group, over 4,000 members of the church who recovered from COVID-19 are willing to donate plasma for developing a new treatment.

Mr. Man Hee Lee, founder of the Shincheonji Church, said that members of the church are advised to donate plasma voluntarily. “As Jesus sacrificed himself with his blood for life, we hope that the blood of people can bring positive effects on overcoming the current situation,” said Mr. Lee.