India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar has defended his country’s purchases of cheap Russian oil following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, insisting it has a “moral duty” to secure the “best deal” for its citizens.
Few if any Indian citizens can have benefited more from that deal than Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, whose Reliance Industries operates the world’s largest refining complex in the western city of Jamnagar.
Imports of discounted Russian crude since 2022 have created windfall gains for Indian oil refiners, led by Reliance, as well as for the Indian government. They have now also placed Ambani alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the centre of a brutal trade war with the US.
Accusing New Delhi of helping to fund Russia’s war on Ukraine, President Donald Trump on Wednesday doubled US tariffs on Indian goods to a punitive 50 per cent.
Amrita Sen, director of research at data and analysis consultancy Energy Aspects, said Indian refiners had gained $16bn in extra profit from importing discounted Russian oil, with almost $6bn of that going to Reliance.
“Any buyer of this crude benefited a lot,” Sen said, adding that private Indian refiners had gained even more than state rivals because they exported more of their oil products.
Before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India imported a minimal amount of Russian seaborne crude. Indian government data shows it has since bought discounted Russian oil worth nearly $140bn, which Ambani’s Reliance and others have processed into petrol and diesel for sale in both domestic and international markets.
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Trump’s targeting of India over its Russian oil buying has shocked officials in New Delhi, who say the country’s refineries operate by the book and that oil from Russia, unlike Iran and Venezuela, has not been subject to direct sanctions.
Washington previously made no objection to the trade, as long as purchases were priced below the $60-a-barrel G7 price cap intended to limit Russian revenues while keeping oil flowing into the global market.
Ambani, whose family owns 49 per cent of group flagship Reliance Industries, attended a candlelight dinner with Trump before his inauguration as US president in January. His sprawling conglomerate is India’s largest oil importer and Reliance Industries generates some 60 per cent of its revenues from oil refining and petrochemicals.
Energy Aspects estimates that since the start of the war in Ukraine, India has received an average discount of $11 for each barrel of Russian oil compared with the international price of crude, though the discount has fluctuated and is now about $2 before freight costs.
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Reliance in December strengthened its position as the biggest beneficiary of cheap Russian crude by signing a 10-year contract to buy nearly 500,000 barrels a day of crude from Russia’s state-owned Rosneft. This year, Reliance has been buying close to 700,000 b/d of Russian oil, up from 400,000 b/d in 2024, according to Energy Aspects data.
Reliance Industries does not publish details of profits from its refining and petrochemicals business, but says its revenues climbed to $71.7bn in the fiscal year ending March 2025 from $57.2bn in 2021-22.
Asked about its gains from Russian imports, Reliance said the group’s refining and petrochemical business had consistently beaten regional benchmarks since before the war in Ukraine and that it would be incorrect to attribute profits to one source of crude oil.
Russian crude accounted for only 30 per cent of the oil Reliance processed and profits also depended on product pricing, the group said.
India — one of the largest buyers of crude oil in the world — imports a total of roughly 5mn barrels a day, including large amounts from the Middle East and a small flow from the US. More than a quarter of these imports are then refined, largely by private firms, for the international market.
Reliance exported 16.4mn metric tonnes of refined products in the first six months of 2025, roughly 26 per cent of them going to Europe and 10 per cent to North America, according to Energy Aspects.
In July, the EU announced new restrictions on Russian oil purchases that will target third-country intermediaries from January 2026. The bloc also imposed sanctions on Indian refiner Nayara Energy over its direct links with Rosneft, prompting protests against “unilateral sanction measures” from New Delhi.
Isaac Levi, a Europe-Russia energy expert at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said the trade in of oil products made from Russian crude constituted a “glaring loophole” in restrictions on Moscow and that allies of Ukraine that bought them were “inadvertently financing the Kremlin’s war”.
European Commission trade spokesperson Olof Gill said Brussels’ latest set of sanctions meant there would be a “total clampdown on refined oil product imports made from Russian crude that are processed abroad and delivered to the EU”.
Homayoun Falakshahi, a Kpler crude oil analyst, wrote that Indian demand for Russian crude had fallen recently, “particularly from state-owned refiners” and that private players were buying “at a lower pace”.
While Nayara was likely to continue buying Russian oil, Reliance was considering shrinking its purchases, people familiar with the thinking of the two companies said.
Srinivas Tuttagunta, Reliance Industries’ chief operating officer for refining, said last month the company was evaluating its response to the EU restrictions, adding that it already had a diversified client base beyond Europe. A spokesperson for the group said it sourced more than enough crude outside Russia to supply its oil product customers in Europe.
The Indian government has mainly used access to cheap Russian crude to limit the fiscal cost of fuel subsidies and sustain the profitability of refineries.
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Soon after the war in Ukraine began, the price of a barrel of crude in India was $112.87. It has since fallen 37 per cent to $71.17 this month. But over the same period, the retail price of petrol in New Delhi has declined just 7 per cent to Rs94.41.
During the same period, Indian government data shows dividend from its two state-owned refiners reached almost $1bn in the 2024-25 fiscal year, up 255 per cent from 2022-23.
“In India the price of petrol is broadly fixed by the government. The Russian discount has helped Indian refiners improve their balance sheets,” said Sen.
Additional reporting by Paola Tamma in Brussels and Chris Cook in London
