During President Vladimir Putin’s current visit to India, Moscow reiterated its ambition to lift bilateral trade to $100bn by 2030, with stronger purchases of Indian goods for correcting the imbalance. While bilateral commerce is nearing $70bn, India’s exports remain stuck below $5bn and imports are overwhelmingly dominated by crude oil. In FY2025, India exported just $4.9bn worth of goods to Russia but imported $63.8bn, leaving a trade deficit of $58.9bn. Crude oil accounted for $50.3bn of total imports, underscoring how bilateral trade has become an oil relationship rather than a broad trade partnership.
Identifying High Potential Products
Closing the trade gap will depend on identifying and scaling high-potential product lines where India is globally competitive but commercially absent in Russia. To identify where exports can realistically be scaled, the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) has mapped product groups in which Russia is a large global importer and India is a major global exporter — but where India’s share of Russia’s import market remains below 5%. The analysis focuses on categories where Russia’s global imports exceed $500m and India’s global exports are also above $500m, isolating segments with both demand depth and export readiness. Since Russia no longer publishes comprehensive trade statistics, mirror import data for calendar year 2024 has been used from the World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) database.
Products with Huge Export Potential
In 2024, Russia imported $202.6bn of goods globally but sourced just $4.84bn from India — giving New Delhi a modest 2.4% share of Russia’s import market.
The shortfall is visible first in food and agriculture, where Russia depends heavily on imports but India’s penetration remains thin. Russia imported $4.34bn worth of fruits and nuts, $1.62bn of oilseeds, $1.21bn of edible oils, $1.15bn of vegetables and roots, $889m of meat, and $518m of dairy and eggs. Yet India supplied only $38.8m of fruits, $79m of oilseeds, $38.6m of oils, $36m of vegetables, $36.5m of meat and just $7m of dairy. Even in products where India is a major global exporter — such as meat ($3.95bn worldwide), oilseeds ($2.17bn) and fruits ($1.67bn) — its share of Russia’s import basket is mostly below 5%.
Processed food reveals an even wider gap. Russia spent $689m on cereal, flour and starch preparations and another $1.15bn on processed fruit and vegetables. India sold a negligible $0.6m in cereal-based foods and $42.7m in processed produce, despite being a near $2bn global exporter in food preparations. In tobacco, Russia imported $966m, while India supplied $37.5m, a 3.9% share of a market where India exports $1.84bn globally.
India’s under-representation extends to fast-moving consumer products and chemicals. Russia imported $3.13bn of perfumery and essential oils and $1.07bn of soaps and detergents, but India exported only $21.8m and $29.1m, capturing well under 3% of either market despite being a $3.7bn global exporter in these categories combined. In inorganic chemicals, Russia imported over $5bn, while India exported just $219m, giving it a 4.3% market share.
Measures to promote exports
For trade with Russia to expand beyond oil purchases, India will need to rebuild the plumbing of commerce as much as the politics. With Russian banks largely shut out of SWIFT, payments remain the single biggest friction facing exporters, making deals slow, costly and uncertain. One way forward is a wider push on local-currency settlement, backed by credible clearing arrangements and greater involvement of Indian and Russian banks.
In the Soviet era, the two sides solved this problem through a fixed rupee–rouble system, under which trade was settled at a pre-agreed exchange rate rather than in dollars, shielding commerce from currency risk and hard-currency shortages. To revive exports, New Delhi and Moscow will need a modern equivalent—along with regular buyer–seller meets, trade missions and institutional support—to move trade from hydrocarbons to goods that actually fill Russian shelves and factories.