US President Donald Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has once again slammed India, alleging that the nation is taking advantage of the Russia-Ukraine war by buying cheap Russian crude, processing it, and selling it to European and other markets.
During an interview with Fox News, Navarro termed New Delhi a "laundromat for the Kremlin" and accused India's elite class of making money "at the expense of the Indian people.
India had limited business with Russian oil before Moscow's mass invasion of Ukraine, but its increasing imports are now used to fuel "the Russian war machine," Trump's erstwhile trade chief said.
"India is nothing but a laundromat for the Kremlin...You got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop," Navarro said, alleging that Indian refiners were buying discounted Russian crude, processing it, and exporting it at a premium.
"It kills Ukrainians...And what do we have to do as taxpayers? We've got to send them more money," he said.
Navarro also sought to justify the Trump administration’s steep tariffs on Indian goods, arguing that New Delhi’s close partnerships with Moscow and Beijing were destabilizing the global order.
"[PM] Modi's a great leader...I don't understand why he's getting to bed with [Vladimir] Putin and Xi Jinping, when he's the biggest democracy in the world," Navarro said.
His words came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, where he met President Xi Jinping—his first visit to China in seven years. While this, along with Trump's continual trade wars against both China and India, has caused New Delhi and Beijing to press more aggressively on repairing relations after cautious attempts to de-escalate border tensions last year.
At the summit, Modi will also hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The visit comes amid Washington's sharper and sharper criticism of India's trade interactions with Moscow, as well as the Trump administration's growing protectionist mood.
