Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova said that there was no reason to believe that India would reconsider its approach to energy cooperation with Russia, RT News reported.
“No reason to believe India has reconsidered its approach to energy cooperation with Russia,” Zakharova said as per RT News.
“The trade in resources is beneficial for both sides and contributes to maintaining stability in the international energy market,” she added.
“We, along with all other international energy experts, are well aware that Russia is not the only supplier of oil and petroleum products to India. India has always purchased these products from other countries. Therefore, we see nothing new here,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said, “wish to clarify once again, as the government has stated publicly on several occasions, that ensuring the energy security of 1.4 billion Indians is the supreme priority of the government. Diversifying our energy sourcing in keeping with objective market conditions and evolving international dynamics is at the core of our strategy to ensure this. All of India’s actions are taken with this in mind. I would therefore urge the honourable members to consider these issues in their proper perspective.”
These remarks come as External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is in the US as part of the Critical Minerals Ministerial hosted by the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. The EAM said that the two side reviewed their bilateral cooperation during his meetings with the US Secretary. Topics such as the Indo-Pacific, West Asia, and Ukraine were discussed, Jaishankar said.
“We did a fairly detailed review of our bilateral cooperation. It’s natural when foreign ministers meet that you discuss the diplomatic agenda. Also, the calendar – what do we expect each one of us to do this year together, so a lot of our discussion was devoted to that, the bilateral side. But again, foreign ministers meet, and we talk about our business: the Indo-Pacific, what is happening in West Asia, the Middle East, Gaza, and the Ukraine conflict. There was a kind of global review of what was happening in the Western Hemisphere. In a sense, we discussed the world, we discussed our relationship, and it was a very open sort of forthcoming conversation,” he said. At the Critical Minerals meeting, the EAM underlined India’s support for the FORGE (Forum on Resource, Geostrategic Engagement) initiative.
