India’s Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar on Tuesday urged Russia and Ukraine to return to dialogue, as he met his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, reported PTI.
Jaishankar is on a two-day visit to Moscow to hold bilateral talks with Lavrov and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, reported The Hindu. This is his first visit to Russia since the war in Ukraine began.
Russia had launched an invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The Kremlin had described its actions as a “special operation” to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” Ukraine. However, Kyiv and several Western nations have said that this is a baseless pretext for a war of choice by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Tuesday, Jaishankar reiterated India’s stance on the ongoing conflict. “This is not an era of war, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Samarkand told Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the Union minister said, reported NDTV. “We are seeing the consequences of Ukraine conflict. India strongly advises a return to dialogue.”
Jaishankar’s visit to Moscow came a week before the G20 summit in Bali, which is set to deliberate on the Ukraine war and its implications.
In recent months, tensions between Ukraine and Russia have escalated. Last month, Putin had imposed martial law in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – four regions of Ukraine that Russia had annexed in September.
In October, Russia had also launched drone and missile strikes in Kyiv that killed civilians and destroyed infrastructure. On October 11, Jaishankar had said that targeting infrastructure and causing civilian deaths in any part of the world is not acceptable.
On November 3, India had abstained from voting on a draft resolution proposed by Russia at the United Nations to form a commission to investigate the alleged involvement of Ukraine and the United States in “military biological” activities.
Besides urging Russia for peace, Jaishankar on Tuesday also said that India will continue to buy oil and gas from the country given the state of global inflation, reported NDTV.
“As the third-largest consumer of oil and gas and where incomes are not very high, we need to look for affordable sources, so the India-Russia relationship works to our advantage,” Jaishankar said.
Since the war began, Western countries have tried to curb Moscow’s revenues from oil exports to limit financial flows supporting the war. However, India has continued to import crude oil from Russia.
New Delhi has also increased its oil imports from Moscow significantly after the conflict started. In October, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that India’s crude oil shipments from Russia have risen to 12% from about 2% in February.
On Tuesday, Jaishankar said that his meeting with Lavrov is also devoted to exchanging perspectives on global situation and what it means to their respective interests, reported PTI.
“India, Russia engage each other in an increasingly multipolar, re-balanced world,” he said. “We do so as two polities who have had an exceptionally steady, time-tested relationship.”
The foreign minister also said that India and Russia have been focusing on ways to expand bilateral trade and introduce more factors of long-term stability and growth in the last few years, reported PTI.
“Some of these discussions are now yielding results, accelerated by the stresses that the global economy is currently experiencing, including as a result of the Ukraine conflict,” he said.
Jaishankar said cooperation in energy and fertilizer sectors has been strengthening and achievements in the last few years have become a foundation to do more.
“We discussed ways to expand and diversify our cooperation, moving beyond traditional areas. Promotion of inter-regional cooperation has been a key priority for us, particularly with the Russian Far East,” he added. “We also discussed enhancing connectivity, including through the International North-South Transport Corridor as well as the Chennai-Vladivostok Eastern Maritime Corridor.”
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