We’ve all heard the stories about how India starting importing lots of Russian oil right after the invasion. I hadn’t actually looked at the numbers until yesterday and they’re staggering. India’s imports from Russia in the first 10 months of 2025 were up almost 900 percent from the same period in 2019, which is a good baseline for where “normal” trade was prior to all the noise from COVID and then the run-up to the invasion.
The chart above shows monthly data on imports from Russia by India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The rise in imports from Russia began immediately after the invasion in February 2022 and was massive. The US in August 2025 put an additional 25 percent punitive tariff on India, on top of the 25 percent reciprocal tariff that had been imposed earlier in the year. In data through October 2025, there’s no indication that this punitive tariff produced any kind of fall in imports of Russian oil. Instead, it looks like it was business as usual, which may be why the US then sanctioned Russia’s two largest oil producers – Rosneft and Lukoil – in November. We don’t yet have data on India’s oil imports through the end of the year, but the sharp fall in Urals oil price suggests that the stigma of buying Russian oil rose sharply after those sanctions, so it’s likely they scared off Indian buyers to a significant degree.
How significant were imports from Russia in terms of India’s overall imports? The chart above shows total imports, which in the first 10 months of 2025 averaged $12.5 bn per month. Imports from Russia during this period were $4.4 bn, i.e. imports from Russia accounted for around 35 percent of India’s total oil import bill. US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil will have put a very substantial dent in this, which the Trump administration deserves genuine kudos for because this – via the fall in Urals oil price – is materially disrupting the flow of hard currency into Putin’s war economy.