Indians “had been very good actors” on buying crude oil from Russia, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said in fresh overnight remarks that could raise heckles for the Narendra Modi government, which has come under Opposition fire for kowtowing to the Trump administration's diktats.
Expressions such as “waiver” and “allow” in Washington’s 30-day leeway to Indian refiners to buy Russian oil – announced via social media on Friday – have prompted the Opposition to ask whether India has become a “vassal state”.
"The world is very well supplied with oil,” Bessent said in an interview to Fox Business. “Yesterday, the Treasury Department agreed to let our allies in India start buying Russian oil that was already on the water..
"The Indians had been very good actors,” he added. “We had asked them to stop buying sanctioned Russian oil this fall. They did. They were going to substitute it with US oil. But to ease the temporary gap of oil around the world, we have given them permission to accept the Russian oil. We may un-sanction other Russian oil.”
Bessent added that there are hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels of sanctioned crude on the water, and in essence, "by un-sanctioning them, Treasury can create supply. And we are looking at that. We are going to keep a cadence of announcing measures to bring relief to the market during this conflict."
Opposition parties have accused the Modi government of bending to US pressure at the cost of India's national interest as a consequence of being blackmailed by the Trump administration over the "Epstein Files and Adani bribery case".
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that India's foreign policy is now the "result of the exploitation of a compromised individual," his barb aimed at the prime minister.
Other opposition parties such as the Shiv Sena (UBT) and AAP have also fired similar salvos at the Centre, accusing the government of compromising on India’s sovereignty.
US President Donald Trump had imposed 25 per cent punitive tariffs on Delhi for its purchases of oil from Moscow last year in August.
