Approaching the USA excluded
India insists on importing Russian oil
4/12/2022 4:44 am
US President Biden is trying to convince his Indian counterpart Modi at a meeting to take a tougher political and economic stance against the Kremlin. However, he defends Russian energy supplies to India, referring to Europe.
The United States and India failed to reach an agreement on relations with Russia over the Ukraine war at a top-level meeting. “It is important that all countries, especially those who have influence” on Russian President Vladimir Putin, “urge him to end the war,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after US President Joe Biden’s virtual summit Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Unlike Biden, Modi does not completely condemn Russia’s invasion of the neighboring country; the Indian prime minister described the situation in Ukraine as “very worrying”. He declared his support for the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, which Washington, in turn, viewed with skepticism.
According to the White House, while the US President warned during the “open” debate that it was not “in India’s interest” to expand its Russian energy imports, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jankhaiharan rejected such demands. “Our purchases in a month are probably less than Europe’s in an afternoon,” he said.
India has had close ties with Moscow since Soviet times and is dependent on Russia for armaments. At the same time, Washington hopes to win India as an ally in the conflict with arch-rival China. Thus, US criticism of India’s position in the Ukraine war has been muted compared to criticism of Beijing’s position. Blinken only emphasized that the “democracies” worldwide should speak with “one voice” “to defend the values that we share”. At the same time, India must “make its own decisions in the face of this challenge”.