In Poland, Jaishankar Reiterates Stance That Halting Russian Oil Imports Will Not End Ukraine War

New Delhi: Asked in Warsaw to respond to the view that Indian purchases of Russian oil help finance Moscow's aggression against Ukraine, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar reiterated his stance that India's halting Russian crude inflows will not end the war. New Delhi, he also said, must meet the energy security needs of a large population amid difficult circumstances.

A day earlier, Jaishankar had told a press briefing in Kyiv that any Indian decision to halt Russian oil purchases would not end the Ukraine war. “This conflict will be solved by dialogue, by diplomacy, by negotiation,” he had said.

Jaishankar reiterated that view when on Friday (September 4) a Polish journalist asked him to respond to the view that Indian imports of Russian oil are “indirectly helping to sustain the Russian war”.

“Let me first of all be accurate about what I said in Kyiv. What I said in Kyiv was that we have a responsibility to meet the energy security needs of 1.4 billion people, and to do that in an energy situation – global energy situation – which is very difficult and challenging,“ Jaishankar said during a press conference in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski.

He continued: “This war is not going to end, and these were my words, not because somebody chose to or not buy oil or alumina or fertilisers or metals and minerals. It will end when there is diplomacy, when there is dialogue, when there is negotiation.”

“So I think let's diagnose the problem right. The issue is a conflict, it's a war, and the solution to that is not in trade. The solution to that is in negotiations,” Jaishankar said.

Previously a minor consumer of Russian oil, India ramped up its purchases of the fuel starting in 2022, with Russia offering large discounts as Western nations imposed measures against it for invading Ukraine.

Although India – which went on to become the largest buyer of seaborne Russian crude – began diversifying its imports amid pressure from the Trump administration, it has turned to the fuel again as oil supplies from West Asia have been constrained due to the US-Israeli war on Iran. Over the last few months Russia's share in India's crude inflows has hovered around 45-50%.

Sikorski was also asked if he ‘still considers that India's purchases of Russian oil are a problem for European security’ and if he has asked India to reduce them. “Our preferences are well known, but I think the minister has explained India's reasons eloquently,” he replied.

Earlier this year Sikorski had said he was satisfied with what he described as a reduction in India's imports of Russian oil, arguing that such purchases were “financing the war machine of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin”.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a Polish deputy foreign minister, said in July that though Warsaw disagrees with India's decision to import Russian oil, “this is really not much of a topic of conversation now”.

Another reporter on Friday asked Jaishankar – who had called for promoting dialogue and diplomacy amid the Ukraine war in his prepared remarks – how New Delhi would do that given that “any attempts at diplomacy with Putin [have] seemed quite futile”.

“Well, you will appreciate that beyond a point I can't go into specifics. What I can tell you is that we've been in continuous touch with the Ukrainian side [and] also with the Russian side,” Jaishankar said. “… What we are trying to do is to see if there are ideas and suggestions which can be developed in some way in which they would contribute to the mitigation, ideally the cessation, of the conflict.”

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