EAM Jaishankar: After boycotting Russia, Europe crowding our traditional oil sources
New Delhi, January 4
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar virtually rejected European expectations of India to reduce its arms and oil dependence on Russia, saying “it is not reasonable”.
Since the conflict, India has turned down US and European pressure at the UN to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and has maintained its arms relationship. “I would still like to see a more rules-based world. But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on what are very deep interests, at that stage I’m afraid it’s important to contest that and, if necessary, to call it out,” he said in an interview to an Austrian newspaper.
“There had been some realisation even before the Ukraine conflict when the Europeans started talking about an Indo-Pacific strategy. It was clear to me that they no longer wanted to be just spectators on developments in other parts of the world,” Jaishankar told Die Presse.
On oil, the minister sought to turn the tables by pointing out that after boycotting Russian crude, the Europeans were crowding markets that have been India’s main sources. “If you take away my food, what am I going to do? Starve?” he asked.
“We don’t even get answers to our global tenders for liquid gas because Europe pays top prices. As of now, we look at where we can get oil and gas from. And we go where there are possibilities,” he added.
Jaishankar said India had played a role in defusing tensions in the Ukraine-Russia conflict by mediating on the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as well as helping “very quietly” on the grain deal.
On the oil price cap, he said it was a Western decision without consultations with India. “We will never automatically sign what others have cooked up,” he said. The world order is still Western and it needs to be replaced by a world of multi-alignment where countries will choose their own “particular policies and preferences and interests”, he observed.
