Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not bow to pressure amid rising inflation oil prices And advising India to do what is best for the country, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Gujarat’s Vadodara for Navratri celebrations on Saturday.
According to news agency ANI, he said petrol prices doubled due to Russia-Ukraine conflict, which put pressure on India from where the country should buy oil.
Jaishankar said that during the Russo-Ukraine war, PM Modi called both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky for a brief ceasefire so that Indian students could be evacuated safely.
The minister had earlier said that India was concerned about the rise in oil price due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and said it was “breaking our backs”.
Amid rising fuel prices and Western sanctions against Russia, Russian oil imports to India have increased 50-fold. This trend is in stark contrast to the developed countries of the West, which have been gradually curtailing their energy trade with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
Now the share of Russian oil in the total crude oil imported from abroad is 10 percent. Russian oil accounted for just 0.2 per cent of all oil imported by India before the Ukraine war.
Even when sanctions imposed by Western countries were hardly having any effect on Russia’s actions in Ukraine, G-7 countries and the European Union used Russian crude and refined products to limit Kremlin revenues. But the oil cap has been brought.
Significantly, India has been continuously calling on both Russia and Ukraine to end the war and choose dialogue with diplomacy.
PM Modi had also told Putin that on the sidelines of a regional security bloc summit in Uzbekistan in September this year, it is currently not the time to go to war with food, fertilizer and fuel security among the world’s major concerns.
Earlier in July this year, PM Modi urged Putin to use diplomacy and dialogue to resolve the Ukraine conflict. The prime minister called for peace and an end to hostilities for both Russia and Ukraine since the conflict broke out in Ukraine on 24 February.
During his talks over the past few months, Prime Minister Modi had also discussed the impact of conflict in Eastern Europe on the state of food security, especially in vulnerable countries, with world leaders at the G7 Outreach Summit.
France and India have been in touch with each other over the Ukraine crisis and the issue figured prominently during telephone conversations between Modi and Macron in recent months.
on Friday, Putin occupied four territories in Ukraine Controlled by his army in a grand ceremony in the Kremlin and urged Kyiv to lay down its arms and negotiate an end to the seven-month battle.
(with ANI inputs)
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