The Kremlin reacted to Trump's statement that India allegedly would not buy Russian oil

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Business FM on whether the United States has succeeded in persuading India to abandon imports of Russian oil and how these negotiations affect the global oil market:

"Indian refineries currently have no economic reason to reduce imports of Russian oil. This is the most competitive offer, and Russian oil has the lowest price. Moreover, due to the presence of such a discount, if, for example, the import of Russian oil is sharply reduced or stopped altogether, the losses will be associated not only with the loss of this discount, but also with the increase in the price from other suppliers. In fact, there is only one market — China, that is, it is only there that you can quickly redirect the volume that goes to India. I have very serious doubts that China is ready to accept a significant part of these supplies. Almost two million barrels per day is a huge amount. Maybe it will accept some of the supplies, but not all of them. Accordingly, if India completely stops importing from Russia within a few months, this will almost certainly lead to a general decrease in the physical volume of Russian exports, which, of course, leads to significant budget losses.

But it is very difficult to estimate them now, because we do not know how much we will be able to replace at the expense of other markets, this is pure speculation so far. In addition, of course, if India refuses Russian oil, the Russian company will have to apply slightly higher discounts in order to make its oil competitive for Chinese refineries, and maybe try to enter some other Asian markets. But if India abandons Russian oil, which I am not at all sure about, it will be a very negative signal for other importers, because even if India, a major geopolitical economic player, cannot withstand pressure from the United States, what can we say about smaller markets, smaller countries. Only China can then resist this pressure."