New Delhi: Claiming for the third time in less than a week that India will stop buying Russian oil, US President Donald Trump over the weekend threatened that New Delhi would have to keep paying “massive tariffs” if it does not fall in line.

Trump over the weekend also repeated his claim that he precipitated the end to the India-Pakistan military conflict in May, saying he used the threat of a 200% levy on either side to get them to stop the fighting.

Asked about the Indian government's denial of knowledge about a phone call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and himself on Thursday – when the president had claimed that Modi assured him India would stop buying Russian oil – Trump told reporters en route to Washington from Florida: “Well, then they're just going to keep paying a lot of tariffs. If they said that, but I don't believe they said that.”

“No, I spoke with Prime Minister Modi of India, and he said he's not gonna be doing the Russian oil thing, so that's it,” he said early on Monday (October 20) Indian time.

He was further asked why India would “say that they're not going to do that”, to which he replied: “I don't know. But if they wanna say that, then they'll just continue to pay massive tariffs. And they don't wanna do that.”

Trump last Thursday claimed that Modi “assured” him India had begun halting its purchases of Russian oil and would soon be buying no crude from Moscow.

If India stops buying Russian crude it will be “much easier” to end the Ukraine war, Trump went on to say, adding that New Delhi “assured me [that] within a short period of time they will not be buying oil from Russia. And they'll go back to Russia after the war is over.”

Ostensibly with a view to ending the Ukraine war by depriving Moscow of funds, Washington has imposed a punitive 25% tariff on India – on top of an identical ‘reciprocal’ levy in light of the trade balance between the two countries – for buying Russian oil, with senior White House officials too railing against New Delhi's policy of stepping up its purchases of discounted Russian crude after the conflict began.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) did not confirm or deny a decision to stop buying Russian oil but said that India was already “diversifying” its sourcing in what is seen as an implicit signal that New Delhi is moving away from what has been its largest source of crude imports since the start of the Ukraine war in early 2022.

Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Friday that the government was not aware of a conversation taking place between Modi and Trump on Thursday.

Later, during a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump repeated this claim, saying India “will not be buying oil from Russia”. “And they've already de-escalated and they've, more or less, stopped. They're pulling back. They bought about 38% of the oil and they won’t be doing it anymore,” he added.

Continuing his party's criticism of the government over Trump's remarks, Congress MP and communications general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Tuesday that the president “has clearly brushed aside the MEA's attempts at denial”.

“The matter of India's imports of oil from Russia  has been raised by President Trump now thrice in the past five days. And no doubt he will keep increasing this tally as he prepares to meet [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin in Budapest later in the week,” Ramesh said on X.

He added: “President Trump says he has spoken to his good friend Mr. Modi and India has promised to stop these imports. The MEA says that it is unaware of such conversations(!) but President Trump has clearly brushed aside the MEA's attempts at denial.”

Recent shipping data from Kpler showed Indian state-owned refiners reducing Russian oil purchases by about 45% between June and September, while private refiners such as Reliance Industries and the Rosneft-backed Nayara Energy increased their intake.

Reuters has cited Indian industry sources as saying there had been no instructions from the government to reduce Russian oil imports, and adding that refiners had already placed orders and that any cuts may be visible in import numbers for December or January.

‘I settled the war through trade’

Earlier in the week, Trump also said he got India and Pakistan to stop their four-day military conflict in May, a repeated assertion that Islamabad has backed but which New Delhi has denied.

“The threat of tariffs, as an example, kept India and Pakistan, two nuclear nations, from going at it,” Trump said in an interview to Fox News that was aired on Sunday US time.

Suggesting that he had possibly prevented a nuclear conflict, Trump said he had told India and Pakistan: “Look. If you're gonna fight each other, I'm not gonna do business with you, we're going to put on a 200% tariff. Which will make it impossible for you to deal. And we're not gonna do business.

“‘No no no’, they said. ‘No no’. And after 24 hours, I settled the war because–I settled it through trade.”

During the interview Trump also said that “seven planes were shot down during the conflict”.

While Pakistan had claimed that it shot down six Indian fighter jets during the conflict – a number that Chief of Defence Staff Anil Chauhan has rejected – Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh said recently that Indian forces damaged four or five Pakistani fighter jets on the ground as well as downed five ‘high-tech fighters’ from the air.

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