From Tashkent to Trump’s India Envoy: Sergio Gor Raises Curiosity
Sergio Gor — Trump’s head of presidential personnel, tasked with selecting and vetting 4,000 political appointees across the US government. (Image X.com)
Trump’s nomination of Sergio Gor as US Ambassador to India highlights loyalty over experience. With Russian connections, Gor faces a turbulent diplomatic test in New Delhi.
By TRH Global Affairs Desk
NEW DELHI, August 23, 2025 — When US President Donald Trump tapped Sergio Gor as his nominee for Ambassador to India and Special Envoy for South and Central Asian Affairs, the move spoke volumes about where power lies in Trump’s Washington. At just 38, Gor has gone from Soviet-born immigrant to Trump’s most trusted enforcer, running the personnel office that purged disloyal staffers and stacked federal agencies with “America First Patriots.”
Now, Trump wants him in New Delhi — a capital where the stakes are not only about trade and tariffs, but also about Russia. Gor’s personal story has an unmistakable Russian connection. Born Sergey Gorokhovsky in Tashkent in 1986, his father reportedly contributed to the design of the IL-76, a Soviet military aircraft still in use by the Indian Air Force.
That legacy puts Gor in a curious position: arriving in India at a time when New Delhi is buying record volumes of Russian crude oil, drawing sharp rebukes from Washington. Trump has already threatened to double tariffs on Indian goods, framing India as both a strategic partner and an economic adversary. Against this backdrop, Gor will have to prove he is more than just Trump’s gatekeeper.
His critics point to a thin foreign policy résumé. Gor has never served in a diplomatic role, and his experience abroad largely comes from shadowing Trump on high-profile trips and orchestrating internal political purges.
Yet his defenders — from Steve Bannon to US Vice President JD Vance — argue that his real asset is loyalty. For Trump, loyalty translates to trust, and trust translates to authority.
In practice, that means Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government could find itself negotiating directly with Trump through Gor, bypassing the State Department’s usual machinery.
But the Russian shadow looms large. India’s balancing act — deepening trade with the US while holding on to discounted Russian oil — has already put Washington on edge. By naming Gor as both ambassador and special envoy for South and Central Asia, Trump risks reviving the old hyphenation of India and Pakistan, blurring the lines between New Delhi’s aspirations as a great power and Washington’s narrower regional lens.
The irony is hard to miss. At a time when US strategists at Chatham House and elsewhere argue that India is indispensable to countering China in the Indo-Pacific, Trump’s envoy may arrive in New Delhi with a Soviet lineage, a loyalty-first mandate, and a mission clouded by tariff battles and Moscow’s shadow. Whether Gor can grow from Trump’s enforcer into a statesman will shape not only US-India ties but also Washington’s credibility in a multipolar Asia.
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