The US Congress-backed sanctions measure targeting Russian energy buyers, including India, signals a shift in global power dynamics and challenges India’s efforts to diversify its foreign relations amidst existing tensions with Washington.
Washington’s latest move against Russian energy buyers has sharpened tensions with New Delhi at a moment when India is already trying to rebalance its exposure to both the United States and China. According to the Indian Express opinion piece, the US Congress has backed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, a measure that would let President Donald Trump impose tariffs of up to 100% on imports from the biggest purchasers of Russian oil and gas. Reuters has not yet independently reported final enactment, but Axios said the House passed the bill on September 16, and KPMG’s tax analysis said it moved to the president after clearing both chambers.
The legislation is designed to widen economic pressure on Moscow by targeting countries that keep buying Russian energy, with India among those singled out in the Indian Express column. KPMG said the bill authorises tariffs not only on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, but also on five major facilitators of sanctions evasion, while carving out narrow exceptions in some cases. The Atlantic reported that the bill also contains a national-interest waiver, giving Trump room to ignore or soften the restrictions if he chooses.
For India, the broader concern is less the immediate tariff threat than the direction of travel in the relationship. The Indian Express article argues that trade pressure under Trump began years ago, with the end of India’s preferential trade treatment in 2017 and a series of tariff disputes that never fully reversed. That makes the new sanctions push look less like a one-off dispute and more like part of a longer pattern in which Washington uses market access as leverage over strategic partners.
The writer also suggests that India has been moving towards “de-risking” its ties with the US, much as Washington has talked about de-risking rather than decoupling from China. That framing reflects a wider diplomatic reality: India still depends on the US as a major export market and as an important source of business and people-to-people links, but it is also deepening defence and economic ties with other powers. The column says India can lean more heavily on France, Japan, Britain, Sweden and other European countries, as well as on its own push for self-reliance in defence procurement.
That shift does not amount to a clean break. As the Indian Express piece argues, neither India nor most major economies can fully sever links with the US or China without paying a heavy cost. But it does point to a world in which countries are increasingly trying to reduce their exposure to great-power pressure rather than rely on strategic trust. In that environment, the new Russia sanctions bill is important not only for what it says about Ukraine and Moscow, but also for what it signals about the future of US trade power and the limits of India’s room for manoeuvre.
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