Moscow will stop energy supplies to countries which offer unfair prices, Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov warned on Friday, The Hindu reported.
The statement reiterated the stand Russian President Vladimir Putin took earlier this month after finance ministers of the G7 grouping and the European Union on September 2 agreed to a price cap to curb Moscow’s revenues from oil export.
On Wednesday, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, discussed the price cap with Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal as well, according to The Hindu.
Dombrovskis described the move as a step to “help tackle global energy inflation”. However, New Delhi has said it will “carefully examine” the proposal before taking any decision, PTI reported.
In an apparent word of caution, Alipov said on Friday that India was expected to act to safeguard its interests on securing energy supply.
“If we consider that the prices are unfair and unacceptable to us, we would simply stop supplying the the global market and to those countries that join the US initiatives on the price cap,” Alipov said at a press conference in Delhi.
He added that the proposed price cap will lead to acute shortage of oil in the global markets and the fuel will eventually become costlier.
New Delhi has increased its oil imports from Moscow significantly since prices of Russian crude oil tumbled to their lowest in March amid the Ukraine war and the sanctions imposed on Moscow by western countries.
Earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that India’s crude oil imports from Russia have rise to 12%-13% of all its fuel shipments from about 2% in February.
Modi’s comment on Russia selectively picked out, says ambassador
The Russian ambassador also blamed the Western media for selectively picking out a portion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meeting with Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.
At the event in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand, Modi had told Putin that the present era was not one of war. Many leaders of the Western countries had seen the comment as a public rebuke of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, on Friday, Alipov said that Modi’s comments were consistent with India’s position on the Ukraine war.
“The West uses only those quotes that suit them while ignoring other parts,” he said, according to PTI.
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