IANS
Given the clamor in the American media and among politicians criticizing India for buying cheap oil from Russia at a time when that country has been sanctioned for invading its neighbor Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki has clarified that India’s imports from Russia are minuscule and payments for energy are not currently under sanctions.
“Right now, just to give everybody the full scope of it, India’s imports of Russian energy represent only 1 to 2 percent of their total energy imports,” Psaki said at a briefing in Washington DC Monday.
She also clarified that “just given some of the reporting, energy payments are not sanctioned; that’s a decision made by each individual country”.
She made the clarifications after a reporter asked if, as part of its effort to ramp up sanctions on Russia, the Biden administration was going to increase pressure on China and India to abide by existing sanctions.
“We have also been very clear that each country is going to make their own choices, even as we have made the decision and other countries have made the decision to ban energy imports,” Psaki added.
In contrast to India, Germany imports about 55 percent of its enormous gas requirement from Russia, in addition to buying coal from it, but has escaped the criticism that has dogged India.
Several other countries in the European Union that import Russian energy have also been free of criticism or demands to immediately cease imports.
Given India’s pivotal role in the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy and attempts to curtail China’s influence, Washington has generally been supportive of New Delhi despite its unhappiness with New Delhi’s neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its fuel and defense purchases from Moscow.
In another indication of this policy, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby deflected questions about sanctions on India for buying the Russian S-400 Triumf missile defense system. He drew attention instead to New Delhi’s diversification of defense purchases.
“We remain encouraged by India’s continued diversification of their defense equipment over just the past decade,” he said at a briefing Monday.
Psaki said US Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh had offered to help India reduce even the minuscule amount of its oil needs that it imports from Russia.
In his talks with Indian officials in New Delhi last week, Daleep Singh “made clear that we would be happy to be a partner in reducing their reliance or even their small percentage of reliance on that”, she said.
He also told Indian officials that it was not in their country’s interests to increase imports from Russia, she said.
“While he explained the mechanisms of our sanctions and reiterated that any country or entity should be abiding by those, we also made clear that we would be happy to be a partner in reducing their reliance or even their small percentage of reliance on that,” Psaki added.
At the Pentagon briefing, Kirby was asked if the Biden administration would sanction India if it operationalizes the S-400 system, which began arriving in the country last November.
“I don’t have anything on the sanctions to talk to you,” he responded. “We have been very clear with our Indian partners about our concerns over this purchase and encouraging them, as we encourage many others, not to purchase Russian equipment.”
Noting the diversification of defense purchases by India, he added: “We will continue to have that conversation with the Indians.”
Asked if the S-400 would be incompatible with India being in the Quad, Kirby said: “I think we have made it very clear to India, our concern about this particular purchase. We have been very clear about that.”
The Quad is a four-nation group of India, the U.S., Japan and Australia that tries to coordinate strategies to ensure free movement in the Indo-Pacific region where China has stepped up its aggressive posture.
When a reporter tried to draw a parallel with Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that was being sanctioned for buying the S-400 system, Kirby said: “And we expressed the same concerns to them and that’s why we had to make a decision on the F-35 [advanced fighter jets].
“Because we believe that that capability, that air defense capability is fundamentally incompatible with them also having F-35s. And we were very clear with our Turkish allies as well.”
