India and Russia agree to boost trade relations

India and Russia agreed to boost trade ties on Thursday as their foreign ministers met in Moscow, giving little indication that US President Donald Trump's hefty tariffs on India for buying Russian oil would disrupt their relations.

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Indian goods face additional US tariffs of up to 508, among the highest imposed by Washington, due to New Delhi's increased purchases of Russian oil.

Western countries boycotting Russian crude say India’s purchases are helping to fund Moscow's war in Ukraine. But New Delhi says its purchases are purely commercial transactions, and accuses the US and European Union of double standards, noting that they continue significant trade with Moscow themselves.

"We have good results in cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector, in the supply of Russian oil to the Indian market. And we have a mutual interest in implementing joint projects for the extraction of energy resources, including in the Russian Federation - in the Far East and on the Arctic shelf," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a joint news conference with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Jaishankar said that relations between the two countries had been among the steadiest of major nations in the world since World War Two, referring to a close friendship going back to the days of the Soviet Union.

The two countries reaffirmed their ambition to expand bilateral trade, including by increasing India’s exports to Russia, Jaishankar said, according to a statement from India’s foreign ministry.