India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, at his joint press briefing with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, said that “India and Russia have been the steadiest of the major relationships in the world after the Second World War.” He described his meeting with Lavrov as a chance to take stock of the broader India-Russia partnership, and identified such high-level engagements as last year’s 22nd Annual Summit and recent follow-up talks in Kazan as key milestones in what he described as a “Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.”
On the U.S. tariff attack on India for its trade with Russia, Jaishankar pointed out: “We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian oil, that is China.… [T]he biggest purchasers of LNG, that is the European Union…. We are a country where the Americans have said for the last few years that we should do everything to stabilize the world energy market, including buying oil from Russia…. We also buy oil from the U.S., and that amount has increased. So honestly, we are very perplexed at the logic of the argument” coming out of Washington. He added: “We must align to the evolving geopolitical situation, the shifting economic and trade landscape, and our shared goal to maximize our complementarity.”
