India will keep buying crude "wherever it gets the best deal, including Russia," Ambassador Vinay Kumar told Russia’s state news agency TASS. He said the priority is securing affordable energy for the country’s 1.4 billion people and called forthcoming U.S. trade penalties "unfair, unreasonable and unjustified." External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar gave a similar defence at a weekend event in New Delhi. Kumar’s remarks come two days before President Donald Trump’s new tariff regime doubles duties on Indian goods to 50%, adding a 25-percentage-point surcharge linked directly to India’s purchases of Russian oil and weapons. Washington says the measure, described by Vice-President J.D. Vance as "aggressive economic leverage," is meant to choke Moscow’s wartime revenue; New Delhi argues the policy singles out India while leaving larger buyers such as China untouched. Russian crude accounted for roughly 35–40% of India’s oil imports last year, up from 3% in 2021, after Western sanctions pushed discounts to record levels. Economists warn the tariffs could hit Indian exporters of textiles, seafood and machinery and deepen a widening strategic rift between the world’s largest democracies, potentially giving Beijing greater room to manoeuvre in Asia.