Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is visiting Russia to meet his counterpart Sergey Lavrov. This two-day visit ends this Tuesday, November 8. Despite the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian-Indian relationship has not been damaged and even, on the contrary.
Diplomatic exchanges remain very frequent between India and Russia and the commercial relationship between the two giants is intensifying. This is what researcher Isabelle Saint-Mézard, lecturer at the University of Paris 8 and associate researcher at IFRI, joined by Vincent Souriaufrom the RFI International service.
” Lavrov was in New Delhi in April 2022, Jaishankar is paying a return visit there at the moment. The two have met a total of four times since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian hostilities. »
If military cooperation is working at full capacity between the two countries – India being traditionally one of the first customers of Russian military equipmentthis meeting should be devoted above all to energy cooperation “says Isabelle Saint-Mézard.
Russia, India’s biggest oil supplier
The Indians import a lot of Russian oil at a lower price. ” It would seem that Russia has become in October the first supplier of oil to India whereas a year ago, it was quite marginalcontinues the researcher. So, there is really a very significant opportunity effect there and that, I think, the Russians are really interested in being able to recover money. And the Indians are intractable. That is to say that they openly declare that their energy security is at stake, they absolutely do not want to give up anything: this cooperation in the field of energy is nevertheless essential. »
In October, India’s Oil and Gas Minister assured that his country would supply itself wherever it was needed to ensure the country’s energy security, including in Russia.
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Within the Asian continent, India has gone from fourth to second place among Russian customers, and is now well ahead of Japan and South Korea, can we read on Asialyst.