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The White House has urged European countries to follow the US and impose restrictive measures on India for its purchases of Russian oil, which fund the war in Ukraine, India Today reports.
US tariffs on Indian goods
In August 2025, the US raised tariffs on goods from India up to 50%, criticizing New Delhi for supporting Russia’s economic machinery. At the same time, Washington has not imposed sanctions on China, the main sponsor of the war and Moscow’s key economic partner.
A Russian drone caught filming its own camera test in a Chinese factory before being shot down in Ukraine
India has criticized the US decision, pointing out double standards: Europe itself continues to purchase oil from Russia. EU–Russia trade in 2024 reached €67.5 billion in goods and €17.2 billion in services. Europe also imported a record 16.5 million tons of Russian LNG, the highest number since 2022.
Many critical Russian exports remain unrestricted, including palladium for the US automotive industry, uranium for nuclear power plants, fertilizers, chemicals, metals, and equipment.
Sources report that Trump also pressured India to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. After being rejected, he responded with tariffs. This has prompted India to strengthen its ties with China and reinforced so-called anti-American cooperation among the so-called “axis of upheaval” countries.
Today, the US administration seeks to have Europe join in sanction pressure on New Delhi if India does not stop buying Russian oil.
Peter Navarro says Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people
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Instead of peace: parades, missiles, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in China on a four-day visit, RBC reports.
He was invited by Xi Jinping to a military parade marking the anniversary of the end of World War II. This comes just as US President Donald Trump’s deadline for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop the war is expiring.
The American president gave Putin two weeks to decide on negotiations.
However, the Kremlin not only failed to respond but also launched two massive attacks on Ukraine. More than 1,100 targets have been used, from Shaheds to ballistic missiles. This clearly demonstrates that for Putin, the war matters more than peace. Previously, he had called Zelenskyy an “illegitimate president” of a non-existent country.
Beyond the parade, Putin will participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, scheduled from 31 August to 1 September in Tianjin. The SCO includes Russia, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus.
More than 20 world leaders are expected. The Kremlin dictator plans to meet with Xi Jinping, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A Russian drone caught filming its own camera test in a Chinese factory before being shot down in Ukraine
Earlier, Trump imposed tariffs on India over its imports of Russian oil, which fuels Moscow’s war machine. This sparked outrage in Delhi, which pointed out that Europe continues buying Russian oil without facing sanctions.
According to The New York Times, Trump also pressured India to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. After Delhi refused, he retaliated with tariffs.
Against this backdrop, India may strengthen cooperation with Russia and China, both key players in the oil and gas market, and part of the “axis of upheaval”, the growing anti-American collaboration between the nations.
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White House trade advisor’s comments come hours after US imposes 50% tariffs on Indian goods
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Chinese refineries have boosted their purchases of flagship Russian crude, taking advantage of discounted cargoes that India refused, while Washington is stepping up trade tariffs against New Delhi, Bloomberg reports.
India is one of Russia’s main economic partners, after China. Moscow continues to profit from oil supplies to India, accounting for nearly 35% of the country’s imports. Moscow’s energy exports remain its leading source of revenues, which it uses to fund its war against Ukraine.
According to Kpler, in August, Urals crude shipments from the Baltic and Black Sea ports to China averaged nearly 75,000 barrels per day. This is almost twice the year-to-date average of 40,000 barrels per day. At the same time, exports to India fell to 400,000 barrels per day from an average of 1.18 million barrels per day.
Analysts note that Chinese refineries are currently in a favorable position to continue buying Russian oil, unlike their Indian counterparts.
Data from Kpler and Energy Aspects suggest Chinese refineries have likely purchased 10–15 shipments of Urals for delivery in October–November.
Experts predict that Chinese buyers could acquire more cargoes in the coming days if prices remain attractive.
At present, at least two Urals tankers are idling off the Chinese coast, with several more expected to arrive in the coming weeks. Indian refiners are staying on the sidelines.
Without Chinese purchases, Russian crude may have to be sold at a discount to attract new buyers.
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Donald Trump has already imposed a 50 per cent import levy on India
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Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has produced many surprises, least of which is the defiant resistance Kyiv has mounted for years now. But the war has also sparked a wave of technological innovation, one of the most important being the mass adoption of cheap drones.
While artificial intelligence has played a growing role on the battlefield, over the past year, fiber-optic drones have taken on a more central role.
“This isn’t a traditional war. It’s a war of drones,” said Vladyslav, an electronic warfare specialist serving in the 141st Separate Mechanized Brigade. He added that it’s “a war of technology.”
Ukraine has leveraged this technological edge masterfully, holding Russia at bay for several years. It has built a “drone wall” – a defensive network of drones that Russia continues to hurl wave after wave of soldiers into, suffering heavy losses in relentless meatgrinder assaults.
By mid-2024, Russia began deploying fiber-optic drones on the battlefield, beginning the process of eroding Kyiv’s technological edge. These drones are connected to operators by fiber-optic cables, making them both unjammable and undetectable to conventional electronic warfare systems.
Fiber-optic drones played a key role in Russia’s successes in the Kursk offensive. The same tactics are now being replicated across the front:
Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, acknowledged that Russia currently holds the advantage in the fiber-optic drone race “in terms of both quantity and range of application.” It certainly helps Russia from the close relationship they share with China, the world’s leader in fiber optics.
As a result, Kyiv is now scrambling to catch up to Russia’s fiber-optic advantage.
The elite Russian drone unit Rubicon has made very effective use of this technology. Specializing in long-range fiber-optic FPVs, Rubicon has launched deep strikes into Ukrainian rear positions, crippling logistics and command nodes.
Their presence on the Kostiantynivka front has forced Ukrainian brigades to rethink supply routes and drone deployment tactics.
Davyd, callsign “Poliak,” a drone pilot from the 419th Battalion of Unmanned Systems, has witnessed firsthand how Russian forces combine fiber-optic drones with high-speed motorcycle assaults on their positions.
“Out of ten motorcycles, five usually make it through,” he said, describing how standard FPVs first clear entry points before a fiber-optic drone flies directly into dugouts, forcing immediate evacuation.
In one instance, a fiber-optic drone destroyed their shelter after threading its way inside. “Luckily, everyone survived, but once they find you, you have to flee fast,” he said.
So far, there are no scalable countermeasures against these fiber-optics.
“Shotguns are fairly effective. Scissors or a knife work great if one flies by and you can spot the fiber cable,” said Heiner Philipp, an engineer with Technology United for Ukraine.
“Higher-tech solutions like AI-powered automated turrets equipped with radar and camera sensors can shoot them down without human intervention, but they’re expensive and they still require people to supply ammo, fuel, and maintenance.”
However, it poses a strategic risk for Kyiv that much of its drone material is sourced from China – the same suppliers often provide components to both Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that China has begun restricting the export of Mavic drones to the West.
“India and other low-cost jurisdictions are already producing fiber, and we’ve begun buying from them to establish relationships,” Philipp added.
Still, Ukrainian drone pilots are adapting quickly. More and more of Ukraine’s reconnaissance is done via First-Person View (FPVs) now because of fiber-optics and “It’ll be cheaper than making fixed-wing drones,” said Bohdan, a drone operator in the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade.
Fixed-wing systems, he explained, “only see from 300 meters up, at best. More like 500–600 meters usually. It’s hard to detect anything from that high. A fiber-optic drone can film from half a meter above the ground – or 3, or 10, or 100. It’s much easier to find something that way.”
He noted the drones typically have a range of 10 to 20 kilometers, though some other units have reached up to 32 kilometers. “But to do that, you need to fly low and in a straight line to prevent the cable from sagging or snagging on obstacles,” Bohdan explained.
“Fiber-optic drones can’t be jammed or tracked, which gives them a big edge,” he added. “But in winter, the cables can glint with frost, making them more visible. Still, if enough of them are in use, it becomes nearly impossible to trace them back to the operator.”
In response to these battlefield demands, Ukrainian companies like 3DTech have begun producing next-generation fiber drones with ranges up to 30 kilometers, optimized for low-altitude ambush strikes.
Andrii, known as Murphy, from the 419th Battalion of Unmanned Systems, said they survived a close call recently. His team narrowly escaped when an FPV drone targeted their vehicle, managing to abandon it just before impact.
The strike destroyed the car and all their equipment, and afterward, they discovered enemy fiber-optic lines in the area.
As a result of these drone attacks, Ukraine is facing an acute shortage of trucks, pickups, and armored transport vehicles, which are increasingly being destroyed.
Across the front, it’s now common to see Mad Max–style vehicles – improvised trucks reinforced with metal cages to protect against drones.
Volunteer groups and charities have stepped in to supply thousands of replacements, but demand continues to far outpace supply. As a result, Kyiv is becoming more reliant on unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to carry out frontline logistics and resupply missions.
Yevhen, a UGV company commander in the 92nd Assault Brigade, said his team is developing a mobile platform to launch kamikaze drones using fiber-optic links. These links are immune to jamming but vulnerable to being severed by other drones crossing their path.
To reduce that risk, most systems now combine fiber with a radio backup to ensure reliability.
The reach of fiber-optic drone warfare is also expanding beyond Ukraine. Reportedly for the first time in Mali, the use of fiber-optic FPV drones was observed by the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), which is fighting against both the Malian government and the Russian African Corps. In Myanmar, rebels from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) reportedly used a fiber-optic FPV drone to down a Mi-17 helicopter.
Sometimes, the most practical solutions such as the use of fiber-optics prove to be the most effective. The technological race on Ukraine’s battlefields is advancing rapidly, and militaries around the world are paying close attention.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a phone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss Ukraine’s peace efforts and sanctions policy against Russia, Zelenskyy said on 11 August.
During the call, Zelenskyy briefed Modi on recent Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and villages, including yesterday’s strike on a bus station in Zaporizhzhia that left dozens injured.
“A deliberate strike with Russian bombs on ordinary city buildings. And this at a time when a diplomatic opportunity to end the war has finally appeared,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy highlighted India’s support for Ukraine’s peace initiatives. New Delhi shared the position that “everything concerning Ukraine must be decided with Ukraine’s participation. Other formats will not produce results,” according to Zelenskyy.
The leaders discussed sanctions against Russia in detail, according to Zelenskyy’s statement. The conversation focused on “the need to limit exports of Russian energy carriers, particularly oil, to reduce its potential and ability to finance the continuation of this war.”
Zelenskyy and Modi agreed to schedule a personal meeting in September during the UN General Assembly and to work out an exchange of visits.
The conversation comes as US President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing additional 25% tariffs on imports from India.
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New Delhi vows to continue buying Russian crude despite Donald Trump’s threat to hike tariffs
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White House official says India ‘basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil’ as Delhi defies sanctions threat
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on July 6 that his administration will impose an additional 10% tariff on countries aligning themselves with what he described as the BRICS group's "anti-American policy."
"There will be no exceptions to this policy," Trump wrote on the social network Truth Social.
The announcement coincided with the BRICS summit in Brazil, where member states, including Russia, China, and India, adopted a declaration condemning strikes on Iran and Israel's operations in Gaza.
The document did not explicitly name the U.S. but criticized actions perceived as destabilizing. On June 21, the country carried out strikes on three major Iranian nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
Trump's latest trade threat escalates tensions with the BRICS group, which has increasingly sought to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar and shift toward a multipolar world order.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, described the summit as the start of a new "Global South" era, highlighting the group's aim to reshape the global order.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin said in October 2024 that there are no immediate plans to create a BRICS currency, he highlighted the group's goal of financial sovereignty.
In January, Trump warned of 100% tariffs on BRICS members if they attempt to adopt a new or existing currency to replace the U.S. dollar in international trade.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the BRICS summit in person, while Putin participated via video due to an outstanding International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant. Brazil, the summit's host, is an ICC member and obligated to arrest Putin if he enters the country.
The declaration also condemned incidents on Russian railway infrastructure and called for a negotiated settlement in the war against Ukraine. However, it avoided urging Russia to halt its full-scale invasion.
BRICS expanded in 2024, admitting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates as new members. In October 2024, Putin hosted a BRICS forum in Kazan, attended by 36 world leaders.
The Kyiv IndependentOlena Goncharova
It happened so quickly.
On Friday afternoon in Delhi, I was at my daughter's school, waiting to pick her up and straining to eavesdrop on knots of parents and -- this being Delhi -- separate knots of household staff. Every tightly bunched group was absorbed by conversation on the only subject anyone in Delhi, and no doubt the rest of India, was talking about: are we going to war with Pakistan?
By Saturday afternoon, my assumption that India and Pakistan would find a way to step back from the brink because they had no other serious choice, seemed wildly optimistic. On the jingoistic, cacophonous, largely unwatchable Indian news channels, there were still reports of drones being shot down and air bases and military infrastructure being attacked. War seemed imminent. So imminent that India’s largest-selling weekly newsmagazine went with “War!” and a battalion of fighter jets on its cover.
But by five pm on Saturday, Donald Trump announced a complete ceasefire. Before anyone from the Indian or Pakistani government had said anything. Entire nations were caught off guard. The screeching newsreaders, still foaming at the mouth, were outraged – “who moved my war?”
And then the media swiveled on a dime (rather, a one-rupee coin). Spinning furiously, crazed hamsters on their wheels, the analysts and anchors insisted India had won. In Pakistan, their counterparts were doing much the same. The truth is, both countries had lost
India and Pakistan had been locked in a clumsy, deadly two-step while the rest of the world looked away. It began on April 22, with a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, in which 26 men, almost all of them Hindu, and singled out for their religious affiliation, were killed. United States Vice President JD Vance, was in India on a “private trip” at the time, with his Indian-American wife and children.
The attack was a provocation that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government could not tolerate. Their supporters bayed for vengeance. And Modi, whose personal brand as the protector of the Hindu nation – boasting in campaign speeches about his 56-inch chest – is predicated on him being the leader of a newly vigorous, aggressive India, an emerging superpower, had to respond with overwhelming force.
It took two weeks -- during which India did not provide proof of the Pakistani state's involvement in the April 22 attack beyond an established history of Pakistan’s financing of terror. The country featured on the Financial Action Task Force's grey list between 2018 and 2022, though it insists it has since largely cleaned up its act. Indian retribution came in the form of the bombing of what India described as terrorist camps. This was, Indian officials said, a restrained, responsible response to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. No military sites, for example, were hit.
Pakistan said civilians were killed and that mosques were bombed. They then retaliated to India's retaliation. And India retaliated to Pakistan’s retaliation against India’s retaliation. Inevitably, there was a retaliation to the retaliation to the retaliation against the retaliation. And so on, until Trump announced the ceasefire. As the bombings intensified, both India and Pakistan insisted they didn't want war and were taking responsible actions to de-escalate. In the warped logic of this fighting, the bombs being dropped actually signaled both countries' understanding that they could go so far and no further.
Initially, the United States, which has played a part in brokering peace in previous clashes between India and Pakistan, seemed content to let both countries duke it out. It’s “none of our business,” said Vance. While Donald Trump seemed to think the dispute over Kashmir was the latest episode of a show that dated back "1,000 years, probably longer." Later, he modified this assessment to mere centuries.
The truth is, this conflict is a product of British colonial rule, of the hastily conceived and disastrously executed partition of India in 1947. The Cliffs notes, with considerable nuance lost through inadequate summary, are as follows: Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state with a Hindu king, wanted to be independent of both India and Pakistan. But when Pakistani forces invaded Kashmir in October, 1947, the king asked India for help and signed an agreement binding Kashmir to the Indian union.
It led to the first war between Pakistan and India, nations that were born just weeks earlier as the British departed. Under the terms of a United Nations-negotiated ceasefire, India gained control of about two-thirds of Kashmir. But this was temporary until a plebiscite to determine the future of Kashmir was held. This plebiscite never happened. As a result, both countries believe they have an inalienable right to the entirety of Kashmir: India because of the king's decision to sign the instrument of accession; Pakistan because Kashmir is a Muslim-majority state and Pakistan was created as a homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims. In 1965, both countries fought another inconclusive war.
But as long as India continues to pretend there is a viable military solution to its disputes with Pakistan, the prospect of conflict, if not outright war, remains an ever-present Damoclean threat.
But since 1989, as the Soviet Union collapsed and there was a proliferation of US-funded mujahideen in the region, separatist sentiments in Kashmir spiraled into violent insurgency. India says these militants are a proxy, a tool of the Pakistani deep state. So Kashmir became a theater of both postcolonial and post-Cold War conflict.
Between 1999 and 2019, the U.S. reliably talked both countries off the ledge and leading international diplomatic efforts to get India and Pakistan to back off when overly aggressive gestures and posturing threatened to become kinetic. The U.S. has Cold War-era strategic and security ties with Pakistan but only recently has India become a close partner with an active role to play in containing China’s emerging dominance. India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. are part of the Quad, a loose grouping intended to counter China’s designs on the Indo-Pacific.
Modi and Trump have made several displays of personal friendship, each supporting the other’s election campaigns. But the Trump administration had declined to intervene in current tensions. It was a position of apathy, as if it had no stake in preventing war. For Modi, it must sting that carefully choreographed hugs with Western leaders had not resulted in more diplomatic support for his military action against Pakistan.
Modi also received little support from institutions. For instance, India had lobbied for the IMF to withhold funds from Pakistan. But the IMF chose to release $1 billion in loans to Islamabad, even as Pakistan was engaged in artillery exchanges with India. With the U.S. seemingly taking a back seat, Saudi Arabia and Iran had offered to mediate, as had Russia. Even China, which provides over 80% of the Pakistani army's weaponry and also administers part of Kashmir, said it would help broker peace.
But it was the U.S. that swooped in over the weekend. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both posted about the negotiations, with Trump even saying he had used trade as leverage to prevent a nuclear war. “Millions of people,” he said, “could have been killed.”
While Pakistan were happy to acknowledge the U.S. role in forcing a truce, Indian diplomats and politicians were either tight-lipped or disapproving. India has long resisted external interference in the Kashmir dispute, insisting that negotiations have to be strictly bilateral. Ultimately, neither India nor Pakistan can afford full-scale war. This is not asymmetrical combat. India may be much larger than Pakistan and conventionally more powerful. It may have a growing economy, while Pakistan is struggling to finance its debts. But, as one British analyst said, if this is a Goliath-David struggle, David has a nuclear weapon in his sling.
The Trump-brokered ceasefire may only be temporary respite – so temporary, indeed, that barely hours after the agreement was announced, the chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir posted on X that he had heard explosions in the state capital Srinagar. “What the hell,” he wrote, “just happened to the ceasefire?” But as long as India continues to pretend there is a viable military solution to its disputes with Pakistan, the prospect of conflict, if not outright war, remains an ever-present Damoclean threat.
As an Indian citizen and a parent, I find both governments' confidence that they can toe an invisible line more than a little disconcerting. But, judging by the political and media response to the prospect of war, only a few shared my scepticism. In India, since April 22, there have been very few calls for peace, very few questions about the need for a military response to a terrorist attack, even though bombing Pakistan has not deterred subsequent terrorism.
One of those calls for peace, though, came from Himanshi Narwal, whose husband of six days, an Indian navy officer, was shot in front of her. Narwal, who was photographed kneeling beside her husband's prone body, became a symbol of India's grief and outrage.
That was before she spoke. Narwal told reporters that she only held the men who had murdered her husband responsible and not all Muslims or all Kashmiris. "We want peace," she said, "and only peace."
This sentiment made her a target of Hindu nationalist scorn on social media. Narwal was excoriated as a "woke secular" – a particularly Indian insult, mixing American right wing culture war tropes with the Indian use of the word "secular" to mock Indian liberals who supposedly kowtow to minorities, particularly Muslims.
India's initial retaliation was given the code name "Operation Sindoor", a reference to the deep red powder some married Hindu women dab on the parting of their hair or on their foreheads. India's military action, in other words, was being taken on behalf of the women who had lost their husbands on April 22. Women like Himanshi Narwal. Though what she, and others like her, might think is apparently besides the point or even worthy of contempt.
The contrast between Narwal's dignity and the absurd propaganda peddled by the mainstream Indian media would have been comical if it were not simultaneously so depressing. On Friday evening, a friend, an editor at a national magazine, sent me a collection of screen grabs of headlines in India, mostly from television news. Each claim was remarkable -- Pakistani planes being shot out of the sky, rebels from Balochistan capturing the city of Quetta, the Indian navy bombing Karachi, even reports of a coup -- and each claim was either knowingly false or entirely unverified. On Indian TV screens every night, since Wednesday night when India first bombed its targets in Pakistan, we've been exposed to a tale told by idiots.
Was it too much to hope for some restraint? But the tone taken by the mainstream media, a mimicking of the abrasive arrogance of Hindu nationalist trolls on social media, was matched by the Indian government. I watched a spokesperson from the BJP, India's governing party, tell a British news channel about Modi's "3E policy -- evaporate, eradicate, eliminate... shameless Pakistan needs to be taught a lesson." Oy vey!
And now, does the ceasefire mean that the so-called 3E policy has been abandoned? Would the Modi government – which had blocked the few critical, independent voices – have the courage to reimagine its response to Pakistan, to reevaluate the belligerence of its rhetoric, and to instead embrace the inherent strength in India’s secular, constitutional values and enter into constructive dialogue?
The signs are not encouraging. In a late bid to wrest the narrative momentum from Donald Trump, Indian politicians, journalists and commentators spread word of the country’s new approach to terrorism. Modi, having been silent through much of the fighting, elaborated on the “new normal,” in an address to the nation on Monday night. India, he said, would no longer distinguish “between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism.” The words were belligerent, the policies no kind of solution.
Perhaps, India’s wounds are still too raw for self-reflection. But the question remains: Is India going to be held hostage to its own anger? Or will it acknowledge that talks, and people to people contact, must resume.
A version of this story was published in last week’s Sunday Read newsletter. Sign up here.
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