President Joe Biden told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that buying more oil from Russia was not in India’s interest and could hamper the U.S. response to the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, at a news conference later on Monday, pushed back against a question onIndia. “Probably our total purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon.”help from India in condemning, and applying economic pressure on, Russia for an invasion Moscow calls a “special military operation.”Mr. Modi
said during a brief portion of the meeting open to reporters. “We immediately condemned it and have asked for an independent probe.”also said he had suggested in recent conversations with Russia that President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hold direct talks. The South Asian nation has tried to balance its ties with Russia and the West but unlike other members of the Quad countries – the United States, Japan and Australia – it hasrecently said that only India among the Quad group of countries was “somewhat shaky” in acting against Russia.entities, India has bought at least 13 million barrels ofsince the invasion in late February. That compared with some 16 million barrels for the whole of last year, data compiled by Reuters shows.
Talks in Washington on Monday took place between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and their Indian counterparts Jaishankar and Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.