Reducing dependence on Russia would be in India’s own bilateral interest, US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price in a statement on Tuesday.
Addressing Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s comments in Moscow on Tuesday defending India’s oil trade with Russia, Price said that a number of high-level engagements between American and Indian counterparts had been held in recent weeks and months over a wide range of issues including India-US relations.
“The messages we heard from Foreign Minister Jaishankar in Russia were not dissimilar in some ways from what we heard from Prime Minister Modi at the UN, when he made it very clear that this is not the era of war,” Price said.
“India again reaffirms that it stands against this war, that it wants to see dialogue, it wants to see diplomacy, it wants to see an end to this needless bloodshed that Russia is responsible for inside Ukraine,” he said.
It is important for Russia to hear this message from countries around the world, but especially from countries like India, “that are neighbours, that have an economic, diplomatic, social and political mind and that’s precisely the message that foreign minister Jaishankar delivered,” he added.
“Russia isn’t a reliable source of energy and security assistance. It’s not only in interest of Ukraine or of the region that India decrease its dependence on Russia over time, but it’s also in India’s own bilateral interest, given what we’ve seen from Russia,” he said.
His comments came at the heels of a two-day visit by Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs S Jaishankar to Moscow where on Tuesday he said that buying oil from Russia is an “advantage” to India and he would like to keep that going.
It is the “fundamental obligation” of New Delhi to ensure that Indian consumers have the best possible access on the “most advantageous” terms in international crude markets, he said.
While addressing a joint press conference in Moscow, Jaishankar was asked about India’s increasing oil import amid the western nations’ outcry. To this, he said, “In that respect, quite honestly, we have seen that the India-Russia relationship has worked to our advantage. So if it works to my advantage I would like to keep that going.”
Notably, Russia has become India’s top oil supplier in October, surpassing traditional sellers Saudi Arabia and Iraq, according to data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa. Russia, which made up for just 0.2 per cent of all oil imported by India in the year to March 31, 2022, supplied 935,556 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to India in October — the highest ever.
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