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www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know News India Times (October 18, 2025 - October 24, 2025) October 24, 2025 6 US-India India Casts Doubt As Trump Says Modi Pledged To Stop Buying Russian Oil I ndian officials said Thursday they were “not aware” of any conversation between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi onWednesday, appearing to contradict a claim by the American president that he had just secured a pledge from his Indian counterpart to stop buying Russian oil. Modi “assured me today that they will not be buy- ing oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office onWednesday, which would have amounted to a significant concession from New Delhi on a central stick- ing point in the countries’ long-running and contentious trade negotiations. Hours later, however, Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said in a news conference that he had no knowledge of any new conversation between the two leaders. In a statement earlier that day, the MEA did not di- rectly address the question of Russian oil, saying that its priority was “to safeguard the interests of the Indian con- sumer in a volatile energy scenario” and that “our import policies are guided entirely by this objective.” TheWhite House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an automated reply, it said staff- ing shortages from the government shutdown could lead to delayed responses. Indian negotiators have previously told the Trump administration in private that they would be willing to cut back on oil purchases fromMoscow, but couldn’t an- nounce it publicly for fear of domestic political backlash. The dispute over Russian crude has driven U.S.-India relations to their lowest point in decades. Despite more positive signals from both sides in recent weeks, the confusion Thursday appeared to be another example of a relationship beset by mutual misunderstanding. India bought only small amounts of oil from Russia before the war in Ukraine. But since 2023, New Delhi has been the top purchaser of Russian seaborne crude oil - lured by discounted prices and encouraged to buy the commodity byWestern nations concerned about instabil- ity in world energy markets. In August, as trade talks between the countries stalled, Trump doubled tariffs on India to 50 percent - among the highest rates in the world - calling them a penalty for the country’s Russian oil buys. India described the move as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” and said its oil purchases were “based on market factors.” In September, TheWashington Post reported that Trump told U.S. negotiators he would not approve a trade agreement with New Delhi unless it slashed oil purchases from Russia. White House advisers took an increasingly hostile tone toward America’s longtime South Asian part- ner, accusing India of being a “laundromat for the Krem- lin” and characterizing Russia’s conflict with Ukraine as “Modi’s war.” OnWednesday, Trump reiterated that the U.S. was “not happy” with Modi for buying oil fromMoscow, which he said “lets Russia continue on with this ridiculous war.” Modi’s alleged pledge was a “big stop,” Trump said, adding that he now had to get China - Russia’s largest oil customer - “to do the same thing.” Modi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The two leaders last appeared to speak on Oct. 9. Modi “congratulated” Trump on the Gaza Strip peace plan, “reviewed the good progress achieved in trade negotia- tions,” and said they would stay in close touch over the coming weeks, according to a statement from the Indian side. TheWhite House did not release its own readout of the call. Sergio Gor, the newly confirmed U.S. ambassador to India, also held meetings with Modi and other Indian officials over the past week. “I’m confident that his tenure will further strengthen the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership,” Modi posted on X, along- side a framed photo of himself and Trump in a joint news conference at theWhite House. India “is not too weak” and “not too powerful,” said Happymon Jacob, founder of the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, a nonpartisan think tank in New Delhi. It’s “behaving like a typical middle power, trying to not bow down [and] not bend the knee in front of Trump and, at the same time, not going overboard.” India’s top buyer of Russian oil, the Reliance Industries conglomerate owned by billionaire and Modi ally Mukesh Ambani, bought $33 billion of the commodity since the war in Ukraine started, accounting for roughly 8 percent of Moscow’s crude sales over that period, The Post found. For months, the Modi government has defended the pur- chases as central to its global energy strategy. Trump said India won’t be able to wind down its pur- chases of Russian oil “immediately,” and added that “it’s a little bit of a process, but the process is going to be over with soon.” -TheWashington Post By Pranshu Verma Former National Security Council Staffer Charged Under Espionage Act A n adviser to the Defense and State departments known as a leading expert on Indian and South Asian affairs has been charged with violating the Espionage Act by retaining more than 1,000 pages of records with classified markings at his home. Ashley J. Tellis, who had served on the National Secu- rity Council during President GeorgeW. Bush’s admin- istration and as a senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador in India, was arrested Saturday after the FBI raided his home in Vienna, Virginia, finding hundreds of pages with classification markings in the basement, according to court records. Tellis was charged with unlawful retention of national defense information, for which the maximum sentence is 10 years in prison. His attorneys said they “will be vigor- ously contesting the allegations brought against him.” A naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in India, Tellis had a top-secret security clearance through his dual roles as an unpaid senior counselor to the State Department and contractor with the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, a think tank within the Pentagon. De- fense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this year that the office was being abolished. According to an FBI affidavit, U.S. officials had been investigating Tellis for years. He was spotted having dinner with Chinese officials in Northern Virginia on at least four occasions from 2022 to last month and was overheard discussing Iranian-Chinese relations, the U.S.- Pakistan relationship and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, an FBI agent said in the court filing. Tellis arrived at a dinner in 2022 with a manila enve- lope that he did not appear to have upon departing, the FBI filing says. At a dinner last month in Fairfax, Chinese officials gave Tellis a red gift bag, the document says. A federal magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia, granted a request from federal prosecutors to hold Tellis in jail until a detention hearing scheduled for Oct. 21. The State Department referred questions to the FBI. Tellis, 64, has published several books and studies on India’s role as a nuclear power and was also serving as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Inter- national Peace at the time of the arrest. He is now on administrative leave from the organization, a Carnegie spokeswoman confirmedWednesday. In a statement responding to the accusationsWednes- day, Tellis’s attorneys said he had built a reputation as a widely respected scholar and senior policy adviser to the U.S. government. “At the next court hearing in the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday and in our related filings on Monday, we will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operat- ing on behalf of a foreign adversary,” attorneys Deborah Curtis and John Nassikas said. In the charging documents filed in U.S. District Court, officials said Tellis had printed hundreds of pages of classified records at Defense and State facilities in the Washington region since last month, including more than 350 pages from a document that bore markings showing that it was classified at the “secret” level and contained risk-sensitive information from a foreign government that had been obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That document’s title indicated that it dealt with “U.S. Air Force tactics techniques and procedures,” according to the FBI affidavit. A separate 40-page document marked “secret” that Tellis allegedly printed the same day, Sept. 25, concerned “military aircraft capabilities,” the court filing says. Tellis was scheduled to depart for Rome with his family Saturday when the FBI executed its search warrant and arrested him, according to court records. He had booked return travel to the United States, the FBI said..” -TheWashington Post By Salvador Rizzo PHOTO:WHITE HOUSEVIDEO SCREENGRAB,VIA ANI President Trump with FBI Director Kash Patel October 15, 2025, at the White House briefing.