Public opinion on India's oil imports from Russia amid US sanctions is notably polarized. While there is significant opposition to complying with US demands, with many expressing strong nationalistic sentiments and urging India to maintain its historical ties with Russia, there is also concern regarding India's geopolitical positioning and dependence on both the US and Russia. Overall, many express skepticism about US sanctions and a desire for India to prioritize its economic sovereignty.

Indian Government

United States

Russia

Companies in India are buying and refining. Then a lot of that refined products is sold in EU and US.  

ResponsibleBank1387

Tariffs are on India. Russia will keep selling the question is whether India will keep buying.

troublesome58

India just hosted the Chinese foreign minister, PM modi will visit China soon after 9 years, Direct flights are resuming soon. India will move away from the US and EU. The biggest backstabbing america did to India was hosting the Pakistani general and helping the terror state. 

As they say being America's friend is deadly.

Psychological-Dot270

The truth is that tarrifs are paid by the domestic importers. It’s going to do more damage to American companies than Indian ones. The EU buys a tonne of “indian” oil at high markup knowing full well that it’s that same oil it used to buy directly for cheaper. I never understood this. America has declining influence over this and it really wouldn’t hurt India or Russia very much to put tariffs and sanctions in place. Certainly less than it would damage indo-American geopolitical relations. It won’t be so long before India is a bigger gdpppp economy than America anyway and then they get to dictate. It’s a self inflicted wound that’s pretty pointless for the US

WonkiWombat

Why is Europe buying 19% gas from Russia?
Is europe going to buy from US LNG? 

So at the end of the day it is business $ and wtf care about Ukraine.

sfrogerfun

Why is no one talking about most of the Indian bought Russian oil is just refined and sold to the EU?

Fit_Rice_3485

And Americans will continue paying for all these new Trump Sales Taxes, because Trump got his feelings hurt by India. because india denied trump mediating indo-pak conflict earlier in the year. This quashed the Nobel chances for the pedo potus.

Trumplethinskin

flugenblar

Good idea -- and they gave India 5% discount too!

Prize-Grapefruiter

Easy for them to say,  they are already sanctioned.  It's people buying to decide if it's worth the trade off 

lAljax

So, the US just needs to increase them for better profit. Looks like some easy money.

[deleted]

America is just ending up creating extremely strong India-Russia-China economic trio, all of then ready to drop all differences and boost trade significantly.

Probably a BRICS currency is on the cards soon

Lumiaman88

That's not how any of this works, but ok.

Capable-Deer-5670

Cool, keep paying, all good. Win Win for USA.

Cautious-Roof2881

Russia oil refineries are being bombed. They sell it unrefined.

Away-Tea6971

GHASTLY_GRINNNNER

I'm glad to see the wealthy Indian families still profit 📈.

InterestingList6729

Chingachgook1757

We’ll, derrr. Of course you will. You need money for drones to blow up schools and hospitals in Ukraine, you silly little man.

Tonethefungi

Americans will continue to print dollars😀😀😀

IntelligentMood4095

EU should tarrif the shit out of both India and China.

ConclusionCrazy355

All because Trump was in Russia and Putin just kept taped him on the back of the head and said good boy Donnie.

Particular_Row_8037

An important detail not mentioned in the title:

These rafineries are in Germany.

Tricertops4

Naturally they need to be exempt. Germany put them under their own trusteeship and is the one running them now. Just because it officially still belongs to the russian company, doesnt change the fact that its a firmly German government controlled entity now. People which complain about this have no idea whats going on and that this is not Germany asking to let the russians continue to run them.

No-Confidence-9191

Constant-Internet133

Jesus fucking Christ germany we’re almost 4 years in

Thisissocomplicated

MarsupialMassive3819

Every single day I hear similar news, India to cut russian oil. india to cut russian oil imports, etc etc Yet from what I understand they have not cut russian oil imports and they likely will not be doing so in the future.

Reckless-Savage-6123

Let's wait for the data to come out in the next few months to see if there are any cuts. If India cuts Russian oil imports, where will it import the gap from and at what prices (most probably elevated prices) ?

krazydude22

US sanctions, to be clear.

European sanctions or lack thereof are not mentioned in the article.

nvkylebrown

So why do Turkey and China not get sanctioned? Will these sanctions on India mean that Europe does not buy the refined Russian oil from anyone?

Cerealfeeder

That could have significant ripple effects on energy markets.

PrincesssMadie

Lol in trump's language India under Modi says -- Kiss my Ass 🤣

ChemistryApart1468

Because it’s cheaper. Unless US offers tangible things, like a defence alliance, material and goods trading, secured economical future for both countries (which the POTUS could have done since the current Indian PM is the most pro-US PM they had in a while but didn’t), they’ll still get Russian oil

IK_0726

It means that the US doesn't have the influence to impose sanctions that will stick.

Look up BRICS, and see what moves the countries involved are making to supplant the USD as the defacto world reserve currency.

KFredrickson

India buying Russian oil stabilised global oil prices when OPEC refused to increase production in 2022. 

India would have stopped buying if the US (or anyone else) offered cheaper oil. But to order a sovereign nation where they can and cannot buy anything from is unacceptable. India is not and will never be a vassal state. 

Europe surrendered the day they signed into NATO. But civilizational states dont like being ordered around.

heisenberg678

They're part of an economic trading bloc called BRICS. Within this context, it makes sense to trade with each other.

That aside, the USA is an empire in decline. It's the last days of Rome, for them

Specialist-Neat-9502

Because it's cheap, they are three times the size of the US in population, and without them the world's IT development would stall.

And because they are part of BRICS they don't really have to worry about trading partners. The US needs them more than they need the US.

BassesBest

Lot of good responses here. I'd add that bullying no longer works in today's multinational economic order. It's quite surprising yet unsurprising that the current administration took a page from the history instead of coming up with a mutually beneficial deal.

India is one of the most amicable countries to deal with on a global policy scale. It takes a lot of incompetence to screw that up.

alumplum

Because there are this thing called "sovereignity", you should look it up, maybe you would like to have some.

R1donis

Cause its better for their economy. What it means for global politics is that India is a big country with huge population and they dont bend as easy as small European countreis who buy Russian oil through US.

Routine-Visual-1818

Because....Trump!!!

Well voted u guys, well voted!!

CommunicationMuch439

India saw how our closest allies are being punished for being allies.  It just means the US is losing influence over the world, China will fill the void, and there will be high chance that we will start WW3 or pressure someone else to start it for us.  US influence was huge because of USD power backed by military power.  Once financial power is not strong enough or lost, the other option is pretty obvious.  Trump might not start the WW3, but he sure is creating the perfect environment for it.

niemand_oc

India has always balanced between the US and Russia (Soviet Union). They are following their traditional geopolitics

Muleface50

It’s not because India was importing Russian oil, it’s because India was exporting or re-exporting refined products from Russian oil which competes directly with US.

It’s one thing that if you are buying cheap oil like china does, it’s another thing that you are making huge profits from undercutting US exports

academic_partypooper

Financial benefits, and politics.

They could gain more by being in BRICS anf lld aligned with China and Russia than being with the US.

hennabeak

Ukraine buys Diesel from India which is refined from Russian oil

No-Character4636

Hi all,

A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting.  Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. 

As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/)

*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*

AutoModerator

I'm not the biggest fan of India's politics (specifically because of their friendship with Russia), but they're 100% right here. The West should be buying absolutely nothing from Russia, even indirectly. The only way we can bankrupt Russia is if we all work together.

RoastMasterShawn

Russia is an excuse, on one side trump is targeting india to attack brics on the other he's also targeting India to force apple CEO relocate the production of iPhones to the US.

syylvo

It's true and EU also buys Russian oil from India. This is why people outside of the west, HATE the west. We are total hypocrites.

Not only for us blaming India for financing Russia's war against Ukraine while Europe is as well, but even when we criticize Russia for it's invasion of Ukraine while we are simultaneously helping Israel clear out Gaza so they can occupy the land.

Israel is doing the same thing Russia is. [Netanyahu admits he's going to occupy all of Gaza](https://www.newsweek.com/israel-fully-occupy-gaza-strip-netanyahu-office-2108730)

World oil market is controlled by sanction (venezuela, iran and Russia) and cartelisation (Opec+), the moment you take out russia from oil market, you will see the jump in oil prices, even in current situation.....

US himself is buying uranium from russia, fertilizer too, Trump just want to put tariff on India  recently when canada supported palestine , he said, that by doing this ,canada and US can't do trade deal....

Bps33382

India isn’t wrong.

US bought over a billion USD in fertilizer from Russia last year

EU bought over 20 billion Euro in fossil fuel directly from Russia last year.

MD_Yoro

Im European and they are 100% correct. Indont like that we or them trade with Russia, but I will never support sanctions against India. They for sure are not allies, but India is truly not an enemy.

Maxmilian_

Biden travelled to India to beg India to buy Russian oil in order to stabilize the market and now Trump and EU want India to stop. So the west think India is a toy? EU and USA stop trading with Russia first ant then talk about others.

Inside-Till3391

The EU buys Russian oil yes. They mostly stopped buying gas though. And the Russian oil is bought with a price cap to decrease Russian income from oil exports. At the same time buying it is necessary to stop Russia from suddenly stopping it’s exports and thereby causing an oil crisis. 

It may sound worse to buy the Russian oil for cheap. It might sound better to stop buying Russian oil overall. But in a world that relies on fossil fuels it would destabilise the whole economy (An economy that’s already weak because of the Russian asset in the White House, the war itself, Corona and other causes.) We need our economy to support Ukraine.

Express-Ad2523

Modi you can’t confront Trump with logic and facts. You’re just pissing him off while Pakistan praises him and nominates him for the nobel peace prize.

You need to be careful. If war erupts with Pakistan, and you hurt Donny Dumbfuck’s feelings, he’s probably going to support Pakistan, and if there are ceasefire talks again, he will use his power to make sure Pakistan gets the best deal. 

Modi doesn’t seem to understand how he is putting his country in danger by not sucking Trump off. As much as I like to see a world leader standing up to Trump, it could come at a big cost.

Y0___0Y

India faces pressure to reduce its imports of Russian oil following new US sanctions, affecting its energy strategy and economic policies.

India's Oil Imports from Russia and US Sanctions

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

Highlighted Comments

Parties Involved

What the people want