The head of Russian diplomacy had to make an effort to finish his sentence after his speech was interrupted by laughter from the audience when Lavrov said that “the war that has been launched against us using the Ukrainians”. The reaction of the audience in a country, India, which has maintained a scrupulous “neutrality” regarding the war in Ukraine, is striking. Despite this, the Indian population is very clear about who started the armed conflict that has been going on in European territory for a year and it is not Ukraine.
Invited to a conference on geopolitics in the Indian capital, the Russian Foreign Minister tried to switch roles with Ukraine and wanted to present his country as the victim of Western aggression but all he got was the laughter of his audience. “You know, the war that we tried to stop, that was launched against us using the Ukrainians…” he stated. But the head of Moscow diplomacy had a hard time finishing the sentence, interrupted by the confusion of the audience. Finally, he continued, visibly uneasy: “(The war) has, of course, influenced Russian policy, which includes energy policy.”
India has hosted a meeting of the G-20 on March 1 and 2, the group that it is chairing this year. Many top American, European, Russian and Asian officials attended, including Sergei Lavrov. Since the beginning of the war, India has maintained an ambivalent relationship with Russia, due to the long relationship between the two countries dating back to Soviet times.. India even on the same fateful February 24 abstained from voting on a non-binding resolution that demanded in the United Nations General Assembly the “immediate” withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
Consistent with this position, New Delhi has never condemned the invasion of Ukraine and is taking what it calls a “balanced approach”. India and Russia have had close economic cooperation since the days of the Soviet Union. Moscow has always been generous with transfers of technology, production and is, above all, a major arms supplier. So much so that, at present, “a good part of the two-thirds of Indian military equipment is of Russian origin”, says the Indian political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot to “Le Figaro”.
Since the start of the military invasion and the introduction of Western sanctions on Russian oil, IIndia, like China, is also taking advantage of the collapse in Russian fuel prices. Thus, India imported 1.2 million barrels of Russian oil per day in December. That is, 29% more than in November. While before the war only 1% of Russian crude imported, this quota reached 18% last April, according to “Le Figaro”.