US has not asked India to reduce Russian oil imports: Officials.

Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, the US and its Western partners pressured India not to buy discounted Russian commodities, especially oil and fertilisers. The US has not asked India to reduce its imports of Russian oil and the price cap and sanctions regime imposed by the G7 are aimed at squeezing Moscow’s profits from crude sales and impeding its ability to finance the war in Ukraine, two US officials said on Thursday. The US officials, speaking after meetings to brief their Indian counterparts on the second phase of implementing the price cap, which came into effect in December 2022, said the focus will now be on channels created by Russia to export crude without using Western service providers for shipping or insurance. US assistant secretary for economic policy Eric Van Nostrand and acting assistant secretary for terrorist financing Anna Morris were asked during an interaction at Ananta Centre if there had been any fresh demand for India to reduce Russian oil imports. “No, it’s important to us to keep the oil supply on the market. What we want to do is limit [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s profit from it, and that’s what this policy is designed to engender,” Nostrand said. He added, “As one of the most significant global consumers of oil, we know that the Indian economy has much at stake in the Russian oil trade, and has much at stake from the global supply disruptions that the price cap is designed to avoid.” Morris said that since the second half of 2023, the US had detected Russian efforts to build a “shadow fleet”, or an infrastructure of ships, insurers and other maritime services with “providers with opaque ownership structures” and a history of sanctions evasion activities. Russia’s investments diverted funds from the battlefield in Ukraine. “We’re happy to see them spending money on oil tankers and not tanks, but also importantly, it’s now time for us to respond to a different reality where Russia has created a larger channel to move oil without touching [Western] coalition services,” Nostrand said.