Tata Steel, one of India’s largest steelmakers, said on Wednesday that it “made a conscious decision to stop doing business with Russia”.
The company, which is also one of the biggest steelmakers in Europe, said it had a plan in place to ensure minimal disruption to its business. All of “our steel production plants in India, Britain and the Netherlands have sourced alternative raw materials to end their dependence on Russia,” she added in a statement, without giving details all other details.
Tata Steel is part of the Tata Group, one of India’s largest multinational conglomerates.
The announcement comes just days after Infosys (INFY), one of India’s largest tech companies, announced that it has started shifting its operations out of Russia. “Given what’s going on in the region, we’ve started moving all of our work from our centers in Russia to our centers outside of Russia,” Infosys CEO Salil Parekh told reporters last week.
“We also provide support to reskill displaced people and when they move to other regions when they can work at some of our locations in Eastern Europe,” he added.
In the past two months, dozens of companies from around the world have suspended, closed or scaled back their operations in Russia.
Close connection
The cessation of operations by the Indian Corporate giants comes at a time when New Delhi The company is reportedly ramping up its purchases of Russian oil, which is now trading at a deep discount due to Western sanctions. Unlike the West, the South Asian country, which has a longstanding relationship with Moscow, has not imposed sanctions on Moscow and This month abstained to remove Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. More than 50% of the country’s military equipment comes from Russia.
While the United States keeps trying To rally the world behind crippling economic sanctions against Moscow, India has also not backed out on purchases of Russian energy oil or gas and has defended its position, citing Europe’s continued dependence on imports from Russia.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this week that “India must make its own decisions about how to deal with the Russian war in Ukraine.”
The top US diplomat noted that “India’s relationship with Russia has evolved over decades, at a time when the United States was unable to be India’s partner”.
But “times have changed,” Blinken added, and the United States is “able and willing to be a preferred partner with India.”
— Manveena Suri in New Delhi contributed to this report.