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‘Hope we can fix it’: Rubio on India's Russian oil purchases, speaks of more sanctions
US Secretary of State says talks with India focused on Russian oil purchases, claims there's been a lot of progress; wants Europe to also impose sanctions
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday said President Donald Trump is considering more sanctions on Russia, such as penal trade tariffs on India for buying oil from the country, to force an end to the Ukraine war. He prefaced that with a call for Europe, too, to impose such sanctions.
“Right now there are countries in Europe that are still buying massive amounts of oil and natural gas from Russia, which is absurd,” Rubio said in an interaction with NBC.
“We’ve already seen the measures we’ve taken with regards to India, although that’s something we hope we can fix,” he added, “And the President has the ability to do more, and he’s considering doing more because of the direction this has taken.”
Earlier, Rubio said in another interview that talks with India for a trade deal were focused on the Russian oil purchases. "We had meetings with them again yesterday, and it has to do with their purchase of Russian oil," Rubio said in the interview on ABC News, citing “a lot of progress”.
India's commerce minister Piyush Goyal is in the US to accelerate talks that resumed last week after personal interactions between Trump and PM Narendra Modi.
Trump last month imposed a 25% punitive levy on Indian imports from August 27, doubling overall tariffs to 50%, as his administration pressures New Delhi to end its oil deals with Moscow.
Rubio did not say whether the two sides discussed the Trump administration's H-1B visa $100,000 fee, which mostly impacts Indian engineers, or US demands that India open its agriculture and dairy sector for American companies which New Delhi sees as a red line.
Meanwhile, PM Modi has avoided a confrontational stance despite heated remarks over the past few months from Trump and his officials. He has been pitching for “swadeshi” or made-in-India products over foreign ones as an apparent counter to the tariff threat.
