The Kremlin said on Monday it was "actively preparing" for President Vladimir Putin to visit India before the end of the year and hoped it would be a substantive trip.

Putin is due to visit India in December according to the Kremlin. He last went there in December 2021, just a few months before ordering troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

On September 25, Russian deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev visited Delhi and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They discussed economic issues, including a free trade Agreement under negotiation and agricultural trade.

The tour comes amid heightened tensions between New Delhi and Washington over India's trade relations with Russia.

US President Donald Trump has reiterated that India has agreed to reduce its purchase of Russian crude.

Trump said PM Narendra Modi had assured him during a phone call in October that Delhi "was not going to buy much oil from Russia" as he too "wants to see the war end with Russia-Ukraine".

India became one of the biggest markets for Russian oil as Western nations shunned purchases and imposed sanctions on Moscow after the Ukraine war started in 2022.

In recent months, US officials have accused India of helping to fund Russia's war against Ukraine by continuing to buy crude oil, a claim that Delhi denies.

The Trump administration has put both public and diplomatic pressure on Delhi to reduce its support for Moscow's energy market, as part of efforts to economically isolate the Kremlin and push for an end to the war in Ukraine. Oil and gas are Russia's largest exports, and Moscow's biggest customers include China, India and Turkey.

As part of this pressure, the US has imposed 50 per cent tariffs - including an additional 25 per cent as a penalty for buying Russian oil - on Indian goods.

Wants war to end but peace process is stalled

The Kremlin also on Monday said it wanted the Ukraine war to end as soon as possible but that efforts to resolve it had stalled.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to remarks on Friday by Donald Trump, who said at a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban last Friday: "I think we agree that the war is going to end in the not too distant future."

Peskov restated the Kremlin's position that the war could end once Russia achieved its goals, and it would prefer to do this by political and diplomatic means.

"But there is currently a pause, the situation is stalled. It is stalled not through our fault," he said, blaming Ukraine.

Ukraine and its European allies reject Moscow's charge that it is blocking peace efforts. No face-to-face talks between Russia and Ukraine have taken place since July 23.

Trump has tried to persuade Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet, but the Kremlin has said such a summit could only take place in Moscow - a condition that Zelensky rejects. He has repeatedly said he does not believe that Putin is serious about seeking peace.

Peskov said it was Kyiv that did not want to continue the conversation.

"They are being egged on in every way by the Europeans, who believe that Ukraine can win the war and secure its interests by military means," he said.

He said that was a deep delusion, given the situation on the battle front.

As the war approaches the end of its fourth year, Russia holds about 19 per cent of Ukrainian territory and is pushing hard to take the cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk.

It further said that Sergei Lavrov was working actively as Russia's foreign minister and suggested that people ignore Western media speculation that he may have fallen out of favour with President Vladimir Putin.

Lavrov, 75, a veteran Soviet-era diplomat known for his robust negotiating style, was absent from a big Kremlin meeting last week that he would typically attend, and Putin chose someone else to attend a G20 summit in South Africa later this month, a role that Lavrov has filled in the past.

The Kremlin on Friday dismissed speculation that Lavrov had fallen out of favour with Putin however, after efforts to organise a summit between the Russian president and Donald Trump were put on ice last month.