When U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared last month that “some of the richest families in India” were profiting from the war in Ukraine, he named no names. But in New Delhi and Mumbai, few doubted he was alluding to Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s wealthiest man and head of Reliance Industries.
Ambani’s conglomerate — which spans retail, telecom, finance, and energy — has emerged as Russia’s biggest single corporate buyer of crude oil since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to internal Indian government data reviewed by The Washington Post, Reliance has purchased roughly $33 billion worth of Russian crude over that period, accounting for about 8 percent of Moscow’s global sales.
The purchases, made at steep discounts, have turbocharged Reliance’s profits and helped Russia offset Western sanctions designed to curb President Vladimir Putin’s war machine. But they have also placed India’s most powerful businessman at the center of a geopolitical crisis.
President Donald Trump, who has sharply criticized New Delhi’s energy ties with Moscow, recently doubled U.S. tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent, declaring that Indian purchases “fuel the Russian war machine.” At the same time, Trump welcomed Putin with a state visit in Alaska, fueling accusations of inconsistency in his approach.
Reliance insists it has done nothing wrong. In a statement to The Washington Post, the company said its oil imports from Russia “have always been fully compliant with international regulations” and “do not reflect a political position on the conflict.” The firm emphasized that U.K. and EU sanctions on Russian tankers do not apply to non-European companies.
Yet maritime data reviewed by The Post shows that at least 17 tankers sanctioned by London and Brussels have docked at Reliance’s port in Sikka, Gujarat, since November. Oil industry analysts say the practice underscores both Reliance’s centrality to Moscow’s energy exports and the limits of Western sanctions enforcement.
The scale of Ambani’s purchases is striking. In 2021, before the war, Reliance bought just $85 million of Russian crude. That figure ballooned to $5.5 billion in 2022, peaked at $11.7 billion in 2023, and totaled $6.2 billion in the first eight months of this year, The Washington Post reported.
Trump has made cutting Indian oil imports from Russia a condition for resuming stalled trade talks with New Delhi. Indian negotiators, according to officials familiar with the discussions, have privately signaled willingness to scale back but fear domestic political backlash if they do so publicly.
Meanwhile, Ambani has maintained a conspicuous silence, even as Reliance inked a 10-year deal with Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil giant, worth $13 billion annually. Analysts say that unless the U.S. and its allies expand sanctions to explicitly target companies like Reliance, the flow of Russian crude to India is unlikely to stop.
“Anyone who is buying Russian oil is feeding into the Kremlin’s budget, which is then feeding the army,” said Vaibhav Raghunandan of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
For now, Ambani’s empire continues to thrive, with Russian crude fueling both his refineries and the diplomatic standoff between Washington and New Delhi.
