Trade With Russia on Similar Levels for EU and India

Total bilateral trade with Russia, meaning export to plus imports from the country, stood at comparable levels for the European Union and India in 2024. However, EU trade with Russia decreased to around a quarter of its original size after the invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Indian trade with Russia moved in the opposite direction, more than quintupling after 2021 as India bought up cheap Russian oil that was shunned on world markets.

Against this backdrop, India's foreign ministry has decried unequal treatment considering U.S. trade and tariff policy. While the European Union has made a trade deal lowering tariffs on its goods to 15 percent (at the cost of making some big concessions), India is still without an agreemement, is facing a general tariff rate of 25 percent starting by the end of this week and has now been repeatedly threatened by the U.S. with additional tariffs of up to 100 percent due to its large purchases of Russian oil. U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post Monday that an announcement on the matter would be taking place Friday.

While India has repeatedly stressed its non-alliance and said it is only putting the interest of its citizens first by taking advantage of good world market prices, the U.S. and other Western nations have accused the country of having become a significant supplier of funds without which the Russian invasion of Ukraine could not carry on as it has. However, critics also say that the European Union has not done enough to reduce its remaining dependency on Russian imports, which are also mainly in the fossil fuel sector, and that claims that there are no alternatives for the bloc have repeatedly been disproven. The EU said it would end all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027.