- Wednesday, March 05, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
While India has been accused in the west of not taking a strong stand on Russia despite its military invasion of Ukraine and over the decision to buy oil from Moscow, now a number of South Asian nation’s leather companies have also come under the scanner.
It has been alleged that they have helped the Kremlin’s war efforts by exporting leather to Russian firms that make boots for its armed forces since the invasion of the East European country started in February this year, The Guardian reported.
The Narendra Modi government of India has neither joined hands with the western nations to openly criticise Russia over the war nor barred the country’s companies from trading with Moscow and trade has grown by more than 400 per cent with India becoming one of the largest buyers of cheap Russian crude oil.
Russian manufacturers have also looked to India to supply crucial goods that no longer come from the west which has taken a strong stand on Moscow.
The government of Ukraine has also accused India of giving Russian president Vladimir Putin a “loophole” against the western sanctions and in a speech made this week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky asked India to be “more active” in efforts to end the aggression by Putin’s forces.
Homera Tanning, an Indian leather company based in the northern state of Haryana, has been upfront about its dealings with Moscow, The Guardian report added.
It said that each month, it was providing leather hides and boot products worth £830,00 to Russia and that Russian footwear companies — Donobuv and Vostok — were among the biggest users of its materials. The two Russian firms are the primary suppliers of boots to the country’s troops.
“Russia was a regular market like any other market, like China or Europe, but suddenly after the war there was a boost in demand,” Tahir Rizwan, the director of Homera Tanning, was quoted as saying.
“I think one of the reasons we had this boom was because the west was no longer supplying to them.”
He also said that the leather sold to Russian companies was a “particular kind of leather, used only for army shoes and for safety shoes for industries like oil and gas”, the report said.
Russia had accounted for about 10% per cent of business before the war started, the director of Homera Tanning said, but that was now up to about 70 per cent, with Donobuv and Vostok among the biggest customers.
Rizwan said his company was also shipping seven or eight containers of leather products — both finished buffalo leather hides and the upper part of the boot — to Russia every month.
According to data, between May and October, Homera Tanning exported leather boots products to Russia worth more than £5 million.
Aaisha International, a sister leather company to Homera Tanning which shares executive management, sold finished leather worth £132,000 directly to Donobuv in August and another £135,000 in October.
According to The Guardian report, leather is just one of the products that Russian companies have been hoping to acquire from India while facing western sanctions, with Moscow recently sending a list to India of about 500 goods it was planning to import.
With a growing £16.6 billion trade deficit, India is also looking to export more to Russia.
In October, India exported goods worth £232 million to Russia, up 3.7 per cent compared to a year ago, and the Indian external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said it hoped to double trade in the “foreseeable future”.
Ajay Sahai, the director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations, said the Indian exporters were now getting several requests and queries from Russian businesses that were desperate for the supply of goods, including food products, chemicals, and electronic goods, to raw materials and car parts.
“Russia requires almost everything under the sun,” Sahai told The Guardian.
“The west has stopped exporting to Russia, so they are now looking to the Indian market for what they need.”
