A file photo of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and EAM S Jaishankar during the joint press conference in December 2023. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday lauded India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for navigating bilateral ties between New Delhi and Moscow amid the war in Ukraine. Lavrov recalled how Jaishankar gave a strong response to European leaders "to mind their own business" when they asked why New Delhi continued to align itself with Moscow.
Lavrov was speaking at the World Youth Forum in Russia's Sochi while responding to a query on why India was continuing to purchase oil from Russia amid the Ukraine war.
“My friend, foreign minister Subramanyam Jaishankar, was once at the UN, giving a speech. He was asked why they started buying so much oil from Russia. He advised them to mind their own business and reminded them at the same time how much oil the West had started buying and continued to buy oil from the Russian Federation. This is national dignity,” Lavrov was quoted as reported by Sputnik news agency.
Russian Minister Lavrov's statement came amid criticism in Europe against India that its procurement of Russian crude oil is detrimental to the effectiveness of the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It is to be noted that India significantly increased its oil purchases from Russia following the geopolitical tensions arising from Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Despite global sanctions, India capitalised on discounted Russian oil prices, with imports growing from zero in January 2022 to 1.27 million barrels a day by January 2023.
In January 2023, EAM defended India's move to import crude oil from Russia notwithstanding the growing disquiet over it by Western powers, saying that Europe has imported six times the fossil fuel energy from Russia than India has done since February 2022.
In 2023, India's oil imports from Russia more than doubled to 1.79 million barrels a day, making Russia the dominant supplier. Its imports from suppliers like Iraq saw a dip.
Lavrov also highlighted the historical partnership between India and Russia, particularly Moscow’s support for New Delhi during the Cold War period when the West withheld advanced weaponry.
Last month, Jaishankar said “Russia has never hurt India’s interests”. In an interview to Handelsblatt during his visit for the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Jaishankar stated: “Everyone conducts a relationship based on their past experiences. If I look at the history of India post-independence, Russia has never hurt our interests. The relations of powers like Europe, the US, China or Japan with Russia, they have all seen ups and downs. We have had a stable and always very friendly relationship with Russia. And our relationship with Russia today is based on this experience. For others, things were different, and conflicts may have shaped the relationship. We, on the other hand, had a politically and militarily much more difficult relationship with China, for example.”