Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.
At a press conference afterward, Jaishankar said he was “perplexed” by the 25 percent punitive tariff imposed on India by President Donald Trump for buying Russian oil.
“We believe that relations between India and Russia have been among the steadiest of the major relationships in the world after the Second World War. Geo-political convergence, leadership contacts and popular sentiment remain its key drivers,” Jaishankar said at the press conference, flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Jaishankar said he found Trump’s attitude toward India’s massive purchases of Russian oil confusing because he felt India has been following America’s lead to keep worldwide energy prices stable.
“We are a country where, actually, the Americans have said for the last few years that we should do everything to stabilize the oil energy market, including buying oil from Russia,” he said.
“We also buy oil from America, and that amount is increasing. So, quite honestly, we are very perplexed by the logic of the arguments,” he said.
Jaishankar’s confusion was disingenuous, as he is perfectly well aware of U.S. and European allegations that India is funding Russia’s war in Ukraine by snapping up Russian oil at discount prices. The fact that China buys more is hardly an excuse.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Wednesday that the Trump administration is planning punitive action against China for buying Russian oil, along the same lines as the tariff against India.
“The key thing right now is to make sure that we decouple ourselves from China on critical and rare earth minerals. That’s one point in these trade negotiations where they’ve got some cards, but the United States has got lots of other cards,” he said.
Burgum said Trump hesitated to use punitive sanctions against China for buying Russian oil because he knows “Russia and China have been natural enemies over history,” and he “doesn’t want to do what Joe Biden did, which is drive them even closer together.”
This leaves the question of whether Trump’s policies are driving India and Russia closer together. Jaishankar has certainly striven to give that impression during his trip to Moscow, touting India’s growing trade with Russia and plans for more cooperation between them. He said on Thursday that India will open two new consulates in Russia to help with providing Indian workers for Russian industry.
Jaishankar was the second high-ranking Indian official to meet with Putin this month. The first was National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who met with Putin and top Russian military officials on August 7.
Both Jaishankar and Doval praised India’s “strategic partnership” with Russia, which dates back to the early days of Indian independence.
“Russia is expending considerable diplomatic effort to court India, suggesting that the Kremlin continues to fear the impact of secondary sanctions,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote on Thursday, pointing to Jaishankar’s meetings with Putin and Lavrov, and meetings between Indian and Russian energy ministers earlier in the week, as evidence.
“Putin and other high-ranking Russian officials are spending considerable amounts of time and energy to stabilize and strengthen relationships with India, indicating that Russia views India as a critical source of revenue,” ISW posited.
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