Kremlin Rebuts Trump’s Claim of Indian Exit from Russian Oil

Major powers have long tried to weaponise energy ties—recall the 1973 Arab oil embargo that sought political concessions or the 1980s U.S. sanctions pressuring European companies over Soviet pipelines. Trump’s announcement follows that tradition, linking tariffs to India’s crude choices. Yet India’s post-1947 doctrine of “strategic autonomy” echoes the Non-Aligned Movement era, resisting binary alignments even under Cold-War or 2022 Ukraine-era sanctions. Structurally, the episode underlines two century-scale trends: (1) Asia’s rise as the demand center—India is on track to be the world’s biggest oil importer by the 2040s—and (2) the fragmentation of global energy trade into sanction-carved blocs. Whether this spat matters a century from now depends on how fast India (and the world) transition away from oil; if electrification accelerates, today’s tanker chess may resemble the obsolete coal politics of 1914. For now, however, the Kremlin’s swift rebuttal and the physical reality of Urals-grade compatibility with Indian refineries show that tweets and tariffs cannot instantly reroute the physics of hydrocarbons.