British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit India April 21-22 aiming to get the Modi government to join the international jihad against Russia. As the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta put it, “The British seek to persuade their former colony to diminish cooperation with Russia as much as possible.”
Don’t hold your breath.
Russian producers of mineral fertilizers have increased their exports to India by almost 700,000 tons, ensuring adequate supplies for this season, according to remarks yesterday by India’s Fertilizer Secretary Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi. Also, on the oil front, India’s state oil companies announced that they plan to buy as much Russian oil as possible, changing their procurement strategy from bids to longer term contracts, the Indian newspaper Economic Times reported on April 19, citing sources familiar with the situation.
Furthermore, Aleksei Vladimirovich Surovtsev, Russia’s Consul General in Mumbai, reported yesterday that negotiations between the two countries were close to finalizing a payment mechanism for trade settlement, which would involve a rupee-ruble mechanism to stabilize economic transactions. Bilateral trade today stands at about $10 billion per year, and the two countries have set a target to achieve $30 billion in bilateral trade by 2025.
The head of the World Politics Department at Moscow State University Andrey Sidorov told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that “London is unlikely to succeed in that goal” of attacking Russia. “India acts quite independently on the international stage. Its policy can be described as neither pro-Russian nor anti-Russian.… Technically, Johnson can make a lot of promises but India knows how to handle the promises of a prime minister with low approval ratings accordingly.”
