Russian oil traders have issued death orders to Indian buyers to pay for Russian oil transactions in yuan, otherwise exempt from talks.

India lost to Pakistan in this year¡¯s 5.7 air battle, losing not only the war, but also the overall war value, with India¡¯s position in international politics beginning to decline, the complete opposite of Pakistan.

A recent Russian action also "endorses" this statement: According to exclusive news released by Reuters on October 7, Russian oil traders have recently begun to require Indian state-owned refineries to pay for Russian oil in RMB.

India Petroleum Company, India's largest refiner, has already paid for two to three batches of Russian petroleum products in RMB.

It is interesting that Indian Oil did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the news, but remained silent.

Russian oil traders demand Indian state-owned refineries to pay in yuan

Because the news is very unfavorable to the image of India, if it is not true, according to the consistent rules of conduct of Indians, whether the company concerned or the Indian government will immediately jump out to deceive it is, however, not.

Because this is not just about India's imports of Russian oil, but also about India's daydream of internationalizing its currency, the rupee.

Reuters on October 1 that the Central Bank of India intended to promote the international use of the rupee, but after a few days, India even imported Russian oil was forced to use the yuan, which is quite ironic.

Reuters reports also claimed that Russian oil traders had previously allowed buyers to pay with yuan, UAE currency dinars and US dollars, but they were still converting the dirham or US dollars into yuan.

Because only RMB can be directly converted into rubles, Russian oil traders are now seeking to simplify the process, save costs, and require buyers to use RMB directly.

(As recently as October 1, the Central Bank of India also wanted to promote the international use of the Indian rupee)

There are two reasons behind this. One is that Russia has been kicked out of the SWIFT system by the United States, and it is very difficult to exchange the Russian currency ruble with the US dollar, which makes Russia speed up the process of de-dollarization;

The other is that the EU and the U.S. have already set a price ceiling to sanction Russian oil exports, which is also priced in U.S. dollars, and if converted into yuan, it would help to get out of control of this restrictive measure.

In Russia, there are also a large number of enterprises that accept RMB as the payment currency for import and export.

Reuters said that in July last year, Vladimir Chistyukhin, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, said that the Central Bank of Russia would "make every effort" to ensure that RMB would continue to be used for settlement and investment in Russia, and promised to explore relevant mechanisms and approaches.

In fact, not only Russia, but a large number of countries accept the yuan as the international trade settlement currency.

(India's imports of Russian oil surged after the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which is typical speculation)

This change reflects the huge pace and speed of the internationalization of the RMB.

In the second quarter of this year, the proportion of cross-border RMB settlement by China companies exceeded that of the US dollar for the first time, while the use of the RMB Cross-Border Payment System (CIPS) has skyrocketed in the past two or three years. In the first half of 2025, 4.0295 million transactions were processed, with a business amount of 90.19 trillion yuan (You should know that it was only 175 trillion yuan for the whole of 24 years, and the cumulative amount in 10 years was more than 600 trillion yuan).

In contrast, the share of RMB in the US-dominated SWIFT system has dropped from a peak of 4.7% to 2.8%.

The United States wants to threaten China by kicking China out of the SWIFT system, but the power of this "financial bomb" has been greatly reduced.

Even the share of RMB in the SWIFT system has declined. Western media and financial institutions first expressed fear, because China's foreign trade volume and surplus have increased year by year in the trade war and technological war in the United States, which means that the United States has completely no way to control China's foreign trade.

Russian oil accounted for approximately 36% of India¡¯s total oil imports in 2024.

More recently, it has been that Australian mining giant BHP has reached an agreement with China Mineral Resources Group (CMRG) to accept 30 percent of its iron ore exports to China in RMB from the fourth quarter of this year.

Now, even Western countries have begun to use RMB to settle trade with China.

In sharp contrast to this is the Indian rupee.

In order to compete with China and become a "superpower", India launched an international cooperation plan similar to China's "the belt and road initiative" initiative as early as a few years ago, and began to promote the internationalization of the rupee. As a result, it imitated others and could not be promoted.

After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India significantly increased the amount of oil it imported from Russia and forced Russia to accept rupees payment. As a result, Russia received billions of dollars worth of rupees but was unable to buy much-needed products from India.

Russia was forced to hand over some merchant ship construction orders to Indian shipyards in 2023 just to spend these rupees.

Now it's okay, you can switch to the RMB. With the RMB, Russia can not only buy almost everything from China, but also more countries accept RMB payments and can trade with more countries without being controlled by the United States.

For India, trading in RMB is of course beneficial, but it deliberately suppressed this practice after tensions between China and India, and now they have to resume trading in RMB.

US President Trump announced in August this year that he would impose an additional tariff of 25% on Indian goods, bringing the total tariff level of India's exports to the United States to 50%.

Later, pressure was exerted on India on a series of issues such as H1B visas and India's IT outsourcing business to the United States, constantly increasing the pressure in order to force India to sign unequal trade agreements.

These actions that ignore India as an "anti-China ally" fully illustrate India's decline in strategic position. Whether India's Modi government can withstand the pressure depends on the next few months.