The Russian foreign minister struggled to finish his sentence, punctuated by laughter from the congregation as he spoke in New Delhi of “the war started against us with the help of Ukrainians.”
By Hugues Maillot
Published 04/03/2023 at 15:48, updated 04/03/2023 at 16:15
India’s “neutrality” in the war in Ukraine does not fool its people. A recent speech by Sergei Lavrov in New Delhi proved this impressively. Invited to a conference on geopolitics in the Indian capital, the Russian foreign minister tried to put his country in the shoes of those under attack. He reaped only the hilarity of the room.
“You know, the war we’re trying to stop, which has been waged against us with the help of Ukrainians…” he began. But Moscow’s chief diplomat struggled to finish his sentence, interrupted by laughter from the audience. He finally continued, visibly destabilized: “(The war) has of course influenced Russian politics, which includes energy policy”.
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Friendly relations between Moscow and New Delhi
India hosted a March 1-2 meeting of the G20, a group it is chairing this year. Many senior American, European, Russian and Asian officials met there, including Sergei Lavrov. Since the beginning of the war, India has had an ambivalent relationship with Russia due to the long-standing relationship between the countries. As it had done since the first days of the invasion, it played the card of neutrality at the UN General Assembly on February 24, abstaining on a non-binding resolution calling for the “immediate” withdrawal of Russian troops.
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New Delhi has never condemned the invasion of Ukraine and is taking what it calls a “balanced approach”. Because India has had a privileged relationship with Moscow since Soviet times. The two countries have a long history of economic cooperation, and Russia has always been generous in technology transfer and joint manufacturing. Above all, Russia is an important arms supplier. So much so that today “a good two-thirds of Indian military equipment is of Russian origin,” emphasizes political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot, who specializes in India.
India is also using the collapse in Russian oil prices in the context of Western sanctions to increase its imports. In December, for example, India imported 1.2 million barrels of Russian oil every day. That is 29% more than in November. While it imported just 1% of Russia’s crude oil before the war, this share reached 18% last April.