The South Asian country is currently among the highest-tier of tariffed nations because of President Donald Trump’s additional 25% tariff on India’s imports from Russia, which he claims is causing Russia’s conflict in Ukraine.
Trump’s ire has mostly been focused on the recent rise in India’s oil imports from its former allies, despite New Delhi and Moscow having long strategic ties that date back to the Cold War and Russia being a major supplier of India’s defense arsenal.
At a time when everyone wants Russia to stop the killing of Ukraine, all things are wrong, India was Russia’s largest buyer of energy, along with China. On July 30th, Trump made a post on his Truth Social platform.
According to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “some of the richest families in India” were the biggest recipients of these imports, according to CNBC’s August 19 report.
Reliance Industries (RIL), which is led by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, is the biggest importer of Russian crude oil in India.
In 2021, only 3 percent of RIL’s total crude imports came from Russia. According to data from the Amsterdam Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Ukraine has increased by an average of 50% since the start of the conflict.
The Jamnagar refinery imported 18.3 million tonnes of crude oil from Russia in the first seven months of 2025, an increase of 64 percent year over year and worth $8.7 billion. According to CREA, RIL’s imports from Russia fell only 13% less than the total imports from 2024 in the first seven months of 2025. Here, you can find out how to do it.
According to Vaibhav Raghunandan, an analyst for the European Union-Russia, the price cap on Russian oil products that became effective on February 5, 2023, has contributed to this change, according to Al Jazeera.
The price cap was intended to reduce Russian revenues while also ensuring global supply security, according to Raghunandan. Technically, a lower price cap is meant to increase the value of this oil for nations like China and India, but it also would reduce Russian revenues.
RIL did not respond to an exhaustive list of Al Jazeera questions.
However, Raghunandan noted that the price cap has stagnated and been in effect for more than three years due to a lack of enforcement.
Instead, a shadow fleet, consisting of hundreds of Russian vessels that evaded policing of its exports, provided more money for the buyers who paid more than the price cap. According to CREA data, approximately 83 percent of Russian crude was being transported via these vessels as recently as January. That was a 59% decrease in June.
For Al Jazeera, CREA tracked RIL’s Russian crude oil imports and exports from its Jamnagar refinery through 2021.
From February 2023 until last month, the Jamnagar refinery exported $ 85.9 billion in refined products worldwide. Those exports, estimated at $43.6 billion, have been exported to nations that sanction Russia.
A third of their total exports, which totaled 17 billion euros ($19.7 billion), went to the EU, and $6.3 billion of US oil products, which are thought to have been made up of Russian crude, are estimated to have been worth $2.3 billion.
Since the price caps have been in place, the US imports the most value from this refinery, trailing only the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Singapore. The US imports the most oil products from the Jamnagar refinery in volume, with 8.4 million tonnes of them coming in after the price caps end at the end of July 2025.
The US imported $1.4 billion worth of oil from the refinery in 2025, which is the third-highest import of any nation on the planet.
primarily made up of blending components (64%), gasoline (14%), and fuel oils (13) from Jamnagar, US imports are made up of these items.
Nayara Energy, which is largely owned by Russian companies, including Rosneft, the state-owned oil and gas giant, has been a major importer of Russian crude after RIL. The second-largest private refinery in India, Vadinar, imported 66 percent of its total crude this year from Russia, the second-largest private refinery after Jamnagar.
According to CREA, Nayara’s Russian imports total a third of Reliance’s imports for its Jamnagar refinery, according to CREA.
“A total sham,”
Analysts claim that it would be simplistic to assume that one company only pays for the additional tariffs.
The Indian government seems to have found it convenient to continue trading with Russia, according to Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who studies the interconnections between economics, finance, and security issues.
India has historically sought strategic independence from major powers, but it did not formally align with the US or the Soviet Union until the Cold War.
The Delhi-based Global Trade Research Initiative’s founder, Ajay Srivastava, described Trump’s tariff on Indian oil as “a total sham” according to Al Jazeera.
According to Srivastava, “the whole idea of imposing tariffs is a sham when they haven’t called out China, the biggest importer of Russian oil,” adding that Trump was “scared to call out China.” The tariffs were motivated by other issues, including Trump’s outrage over India’s refusal to comply with US trade demands.
Reliance, he claimed, may have profited from the lower crude oil prices for Russian oil, but it is only being investigated because it is a private company and it is common to criticize the wealthy.
The Jamnagar refinery has handled 38% of US imports of blending components since the price cap was in place and continues to do so until the end of last month.
Some of the offing’s changes are anticipated by analysts. According to CREA’s Raghunandan, the EU has implemented a “significant policy change,” which would include “significant policy changes” like “significant policy changes.” The January ban is expected to take effect.
Losing this market would have an impact on RIL’s revenues because more than half of its jet fuel exports have been to the EU. Overall, he said, “it will force them to reevaluate their export strategy.
