Russia foreign minister says Russia and India are 'good friends'
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The UK has pledged to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year, the EU by two thirds, and the US has slapped down an embargo. While the West scuppers energy links with Putin, India has stepped in to offer a helping hand to Russia amid its Ukraine invasion. India’s Finance Minister on Friday, April 1, said New Delhi will keep on buying Russia’s crude oil at a discount while prices skyrocket.
Nirmala Sitharaman said India has already cracked on with buying cheaper Russian oil, admitting that it has been struggling to transition to gas due to plummeting supplies.
Ms Sitharaman said: “I would put my country’s interest first, I would put my energy security first.
“If the fuel is available at a discount, why shouldn’t I buy it?”
Javier Blas, an energy and commodities analyst from Bloomberg, slammed Mr Sitharaman for holding this position.
He tweeted: “India’s finance minister sounds like a commodity trader.”
Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, headed to New Dheli seeking out additional support from India.
After meeting with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Mr Larvov that the two countries are “friends” and that India sees the war in Ukraine in its “entirety of facts and not just in a one-sided way”.
The UK has tried to urge India not to undermine the existing dollar-based financial system and scupper the crippling sanctions that are battering Russia’s economy.
But Mr Lavrov has indicated that the two countries can operate using a system set up by Russia’s central bank for the communication of financial information, with India also having a similar system.
He said: “It is absolutely clear that more and more transactions would be done through this system using national currencies, bypassing dollar, euro and other currencies.”
Russia, which is already the dominant supplier of defence exports to India, said it would use a rupee-rouble to trade these goods with India, as well as for oil and other commodities.
Mr Lavrov said: “We will be ready to supply any goods which India wants to buy.
“I have no doubt that a way would be (found) to bypass the artificial impediments which illegal unilateral sanctions by the West create.
“This relates also to the area of military-technical cooperation.”
This also comes after India pledged to buy 15 million barrels of Russian oil.
Danil Bochkov, an expert on Russia and China, said last week: “India has purchased about 1.8 million barrels of Russian Urals oil.
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“On Wednesday (last week), India’s state-owned refinery Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) bought 3 million barrels of Russian Urals oil.
India may import 15 million barrels of oil from Russia this year at a reduced cost.”
Price details were not immediately available, but sources told Reuters that the barrels of Russian Urals crude were bought at a discount of $20-$25 a barrel, which is around £17.
Yesterday, the price for a barrel of brent crude plummeted by more than 5 percent to $105.50 (£80.40).
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