India Doubles Down On Russian Oil Purchases, As Trump Declares Both Are ‘Lost’ To ‘Deepest, Darkest China’

President Trump on Friday said India and Russia seem to have been “lost” to China following Modi and Putin having met with President Xi Jinping this week, amid the leaders hailing the forging ahead of a new multi-polar order which seeks to thwart a purely Washington-centric global system.

“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media, with an accompanying a photo of the three leaders together at Xi’s summit in China.

This has been followed on Friday with India confirming that it will double down on Russian oil purchases, in defiance of US tariffs and threats.

“Where do we buy our oil from, especially since it’s a very expensive commodity, we pay a very high price for it and it’s the highest import, so we’ll have to decide what suits us best,” Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in an interview.

She then emphasized somewhat defiantly, “We will definitely buy it.” On the same day, this development reported in Reuters will only serve to exacerbate tensions: 

Top Indian refiner Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS), opens new tab skipped the purchase of U.S. oil in its latest tender and instead bought 2 million barrels of West African and a million barrels of Middle Eastern grade, trade sources said on Friday.

The state refiner also bought one million barrels each of Nigerian oil grades Agbami and Usan from French oil major TotalEnergy, and another million barrels of Abu Dhabi’s Das crude from Shell, the people said. Nigerian oil has been bought on free-on-board basis and Das has been purchsed on a delivered basis for arrival at Indian ports in late October-early November. In its previous tender last week, IOC bought 5 million barrels of U.S. West Texas Intermediate.

This comes amid Trump’s escalating trade war with New Delhi, but he now seems resigned to simply admit India has been “lost” to China and Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier this week hailed that India, among the largest economies on the planet, has not given in to US demands to stop purchasing its oil and other products.

A combined population of almost 3 billion…

“Such tariffs have already been introduced, for example, against India – our particularly privileged strategic partner, a major consumer of Russian goods, in particular, hydrocarbon raw materials,” the top Russian diplomat explained.

“We appreciate the fact that New Delhi did not bend under pressure and remains committed to the principles of free trade,“ Lavrov stated.