Indian EAM Jaishankar meets Russian President Putin as US tariff tensions continue to bite

India’s External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday (August 21).

Taking to social media platform X, the Indian minister said that he conveyed President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s warm wishes to President Putin. In their meeting, the two also discussed the situation vis-a-vis the Ukraine war, according to Jaishankar’s post.

Jaishankar’s visit, which began on Tuesday (August 19), is expected to help refine plans for President Putin’s highly anticipated visit to India later this year, likely in November or December .

Earlier that day, Jaishankar held extensive talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, focusing squarely on trade and energy cooperation. Lavrov highlighted the success of existing hydrocarbon agreements and proposed new joint energy projects in Russia’s resource-rich Far East and Arctic regions.

Jaishankar, in turn, reiterated the remarkable longevity of the India‑Russia partnership: “We believe that relations between India and Russia have been among the steadiest of the major relationships in the world after the Second World War,” he said, emphasising that “Geo-political convergence, leadership contacts and popular sentiment remain its key drivers.”

The pairing of high-level diplomacy with pragmatic economics comes amid an escalating diplomatic storm between New Delhi and Washington. The United States, under Donald Trump, has slapped Indian exports with 50 per cent tariffs in reprisal for its continued imports of discounted Russian crude oil. These measures were described by India as unfair and by Moscow as “neo‑colonial” .

In response, Russian diplomats have unveiled a “very, very special mechanism” to ensure uninterrupted oil supplies to India despite the growing threat of secondary sanctions. India has pushed back on criticism from Washington, with Jaishankar expressing confusion that India has been singled out, especially given that it is not the largest importer of Russian oil, and pointing out that its US imports have actually risen.