TOI correspondent from Washington: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky jumped into the US-India tariff standoff on Monday when he backed the US decision to impose punitive import duties on countries making deals with Russia, while the Trump administration showed no signs of relenting on the vitriol its surrogates are spewing against New Delhi despite the US president’s assertions last week of a “special relationship” with India and that there’s “nothing to worry about”.
Zelensky told ABC News in response to a question that he thought “the idea to put tariffs on the country (sic) who are continuing to make deals with Russia is the right idea”, even though 15% of his battered country’s diesel comes from India via refined Russian oil. US administration officials are now trying to press the EU to join the US in slapping additional sanctions on India for buying Russian oil even though, bizarrely, the EU is a beneficiary of Russian energy routed through India.
White House trade counsellor Peter Navarro, meanwhile, resumed his rant against India on Monday, doubling down on the discredited view that only New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil was somehow fuelling Moscow’s war on Ukraine. “More bullshit from X. Fact: (India’s buying of Russian oil) “it’s blood money and people are dying,” Navarro said on X, whose owner Elon Musk has called him a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks”.
In separate remarks on TV, the Trump surrogate expanded his attack to BRICS countries, calling them “vampires who are sucking our blood dry with their unfair trade practices”.
“The bottomline is none of these countries can survive if they don’t sell to the US… let’s see what happens…I don’t see the BRICS alliance stay together since historically they all hate each other and kill each other,” Navarro said, after reports emerged of BRICS nations expanding and accelerating trade ties to counter the prospective loss of the US market due to high tariffs .
Earlier, Navarro was mocked on X by readers who have challenged his views, pointing out, among other things, that China buys more Russian oil but has got a “hold” on additional sanctions, that the EU too buys Russian energy via India, that India’s refining and re-routing of Russian oil was approved by the previous US administration, and the US itself continues to trade with Moscow, all adding to Russia’s revenues. His response was to accuse “Indian special interests” of "trying to interfere in domestic US dialogue with lies”.
When Navarro ran a poll asking “should X present this ‘crap’ as comments from ‘diverse viewpoints’,” he was humiliated again: 80% of respondents said yes, pointing out that the community notes from readers on X takes into account viewpoints and approvals of contributors across regions and is not controlled by any one country.
That again triggered Navarro who suggested Indians on X were weighing in on the poll. “India has the largest population in the world & all it can do is manage few hundred thousand X propagandists to jerk around a poll? Too funny. America: look at how foreign interests use our social media to advance their agenda,” he complained.
Separately, meanwhile, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett insisted in a TV interview that India would continue to face sanctions because it is helping Moscow in its war against Ukraine, even though the question was about why the US is not sanctioning Russia itself directly. Several experts have called out the Trump administration for making India a fall guy for its inability to take on China and Russia directly, but Navarro, Hassett, and treasury secretary Scott Bessent continue to embarrass themselves by dancing around the issue, unable to explain why Beijing is getting a pass for buying Russian oil, and why India is being singled out.
Rajghatta is author of Kamala Harris: Phenomenal Woman