- Thursday, March 06, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India will carry on buying Russian oil because it helps the country, India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Tuesday (8) after meeting his Russian counterpart for the fifth time in the current year. He added that the two countries were expanding their trade ties.
Jaishankar is currently visiting Moscow for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. His trip comes as US treasury secretary Janet Yellen visits New Delhi this week to hold discussions with Indian officials, including possibly on capping prices of Russian oil.
India has emerged Russia’s largest oil customer after China, as its refiners snap up discounted cargoes avoided by Western buyers. Russia’s share of India’s oil imports went to an all-time high of 23 per cent in September, from just about two per cent before the military invasion.
“Russia has been a steady and time-tested partner. Any objective evaluation of our relationship over many decades would confirm that it has actually served both our countries very, very well,” Jaishankar said in a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
A Reuters report on Monday (7) said that India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp had applied to the new Russian operator of the Sakhalin-1, after the departure of ExxonMobil, to retain its stake in the oil and gas project in the Far East region.
[With Reuters inputs]
