An Indian company earned €724 million ($787 million) from Russian oil in 2024, reinforcing US claims that India has become a de facto war chest for Putin’s war machine.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, India became one of the key buyers of Russian oil, despite sanctions imposed by the US, the EU and other Western countries.
The biggest beneficiary was Reliance Industries, a corporation owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani – the richest man in Asia.
Reliance Industries Limited is India’s largest private conglomerate, headquartered in Mumbai, with operations spanning energy, petrochemicals, retail, telecommunications, media, and entertainment. The company owns the world’s largest oil refining complex in Jamnagar and is a key exporter of India’s petroleum products.
Mukesh Ambani, 67, is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. Educated as a chemical engineer in Mumbai and briefly at Stanford, Ambani took over his father’s business and built Reliance into a global powerhouse.
Ambani is also famous for his extravagant lifestyle. His residence, Antilia, is a 27-storey skyscraper in Mumbai valued at over $1 billion, complete with three helipads, a 168-car garage, multiple swimming pools, a private cinema, a “snow room” that simulates sub-zero temperatures, and staff of nearly 600 people to keep it running.
From the beginning of 2024 to January 2025, Reliance earned more than €724 million ($787 million) on exports of fuel to the US made from Russian oil, according to RBC Ukraine.
Before 2022, Russian oil accounted for less than 1% of India’s imports. After the invasion, volumes rose to 1.5 million barrels per day in July, per Reuters – more than 30% of the country’s total imports, according to a Financial Times (FT) opinion piece penned by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Through the scheme, Reliance buys discounted Russian crude, refines it at its Jamnagar complex, and exports the finished products – gasoline, diesel and petrochemicals – to markets in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Legally, the fuel is considered Indian and isn’t covered by the embargo.
This setup allowed Ambani to turn Reliance into a major channel for Russian oil, helping fund Moscow as it struggles with a widening budget deficit.
RBC Ukraine, citing Swiss group Public Eye, reported that Moscow used traders from the Gulf countries and Hong Kong to handle its crude exports, accounting for 51% and 30% of exports, respectively.
Entitles from the two countries were also named in the US’s July sanction packages on Iranian oil trade.
The funding likely aided Moscow in rebuilding its armed forces after defeats near Kharkiv and Kherson during the counteroffensives in late 2022. Profits from this trade helped Russia finance the production of advanced military equipment, the manufacture of drones and missiles, and the purchase of weapons from Iran and North Korea.
Following US President Donald Trump’s decision to hit India with tariffs due to the Russian oil purchases, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro echoed by saying the funding goes toward Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Navarro framed India’s actions as a “laundromat for the Kremlin” and a “profiteering scheme” that is undermining international sanctions and costing American taxpayers.
Washington has already imposed a 25% tariff on Indian goods, while the European Commission plans to close this loophole and ban the import of oil products made from Russian crude in third countries, starting in 2026.
Despite the pressure, Reliance continues to earn record profits. In 2025, the company’s revenue reached $71.7 billion compared to $57.2 billion in 2021. The share of Russian crude in its processing is about 30%.
The company claimed its high revenues are due to the efficient operation of its entire refining division, rebuffing claims of discounted Russian oil purchases.
In December, the corporation reportedly signed a 10-year contract with Rosneft to purchase nearly half a million barrels per day, per Reuters. That figure has already grown to 700,000 barrels a day, according to the Sri Lankan Guardian.
Kyiv Post reached out to Reliance Industries Limited for comment, but had not received a response by the time of publication.
US Senator Lindsey Graham said the threat of new tariffs was the key reason Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin agreed to attend the Alaska summit, a risk he navigated successfully after meeting Trump.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar recently wrapped up a three-day visit to Moscow, signaling a defiant stance against US tariffs while strengthening ties with Russia.
Jaishankar also hit back at the Trump administration in a public statement:
“We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian oil. That is China. We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian LNG – I’m not sure, but I think that is the European Union… We are a country where, actually, the Americans said for last few years that we should help stabilize global energy markets, including by buying oil from Russia… So, quite honestly, we are very perplexed at the logic of the argument.”
India is also pushing ahead with two strategic infrastructure projects aimed at facilitating trade with Russia:
- The International North-South Transport Corridor, which aims to bypass the Suez Canal by creating a land-sea route through Iran and Central Asia.
- The Chennai-Vladivostok Corridor, which will directly link India’s east coast with Russia’s Far East by sea.
Earlier in August, Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) obtained information about Russia’s plans to expand military-technical cooperation with India, a Kyiv Post source said.
According to the source, the fourth meeting of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on military cooperation is set for Sept. 15-18 in St. Petersburg, where delegations are expected to finalize cooperation plans for 2025–26.