Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has sharply criticized Western countries’ “double standards.” At the same time, he made clear his support for the decision to buy oil from Russia. The report is from NDTV.
At an event held on Thursday during a visit to Finland, he strongly criticized the United States’ policy of repeatedly imposing and then easing sanctions on Russian oil.
When the Ukraine war broke out in 2022, U.S. sanctions on Russia drove up energy prices on the global market. In that situation, India became one of Russia’s main oil buyers. At the event in Kultaranta, Finland, Jaishankar said that at the time, it was the United States that had advised India to buy oil from Russia in order to keep the energy market stable. When a journalist accused India of showing “excessive sympathy” by buying Russian oil, Jaishankar replied that India imports oil mainly on the basis of price and availability.
In his words, Russian oil was the most readily available on the market at the time, because European countries were buying more oil from West Asia, which had traditionally been India’s source of supply. The changed circumstances therefore forced India to turn to new sources. Calling Russia a “reliable supplier,” Jaishankar criticized the repeated shifts in U.S. sanctions policy and urged that the matter not be viewed through an excessively moralistic lens.
He said tariffs were first imposed because of the purchase of Russian oil and were later eased again. So there was no need to pretend that some lofty principle was at work. Last year, the Donald Trump administration imposed tariffs of up to 50 percent on Indian goods, of which 25 percent was an additional punitive tariff imposed for buying oil from Russia. It was later reduced to 10 percent.
Meanwhile, the report noted that, to keep the global energy market stable after the Ukraine war, the United States in some cases eased restrictions on the transport of Russian oil. India’s Petroleum Ministry has said oil imports from Russia will continue in the interest of the country’s energy security, regardless of U.S. sanctions or the terms of any waivers. On foreign policy, Jaishankar also said Western countries follow double standards in various areas. He alleged that some European countries sell weapons to states that are later used against India, even though India has never posed a threat to Europe’s security.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report