‘Switch off our economy?': Indian Envoy Vikram Doraiswami schools Western media on Russian oil question

Mint

6 days ago

Indian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Vikram Doraiswami delivered a rather fierce and a blunt reply to a journalist criticising India's oil imports from Russia.
Doraiswami, who was talking to British radio station Times Radio last week, asked 'What would have us do? Switch off our economy?', adding that India is the third largest consumer of energy in the world and imports over 80 per cent of its products.
According to a TOI report, the High Commissioner pointed out the irony and said that many of European countries are continuing to buy rare earth and other energy products, not oil, perhaps, but from the same countries that they're refusing to let India purchase from.
When asked about India's 'closeness' with Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, Doraiswami said, 'We have a relationship that is based on a number of metrics. One of these is our long-standing security relationship that goes back to an era in which some of our Western partners wouldn't sell us weapons, but would sell it to countries in our neighbourhood that use them only to attack us.'
'Second, we have an energy relationship today which is a result of everybody else buying energy from sources that we used to earlier buy from. So we've been displaced out of the energy market largely and the cost have gone up. We are the third largest consumer of energy in the world and we import over 80 per cent of our product. What would you have us to do? Switch off our energy?' Doraiswami asked.
"Third, we also see around us relationships that other countries maintain for their own convenience with countries that are a source of difficulty for us. Do we ask you to come up with a little test of loyalty?" he further asked.
A Reuters report on Monday said that the European Parliament is considering proposals to speed up the EU's phase out Russian gas by one year, to January 2027, as officials in Brussels prepare to negotiate the legally-binding ban.
European Union countries and lawmakers are preparing to negotiate the EU's plan to ban imports of Russian gas – with the starting point a legal proposal the European Commission made last month to phase out all Russian gas imports by January 1, 2028.
The Parliament's lead lawmakers on the Russian gas ban have each proposed that this deadline is moved forward to January 1, 2027, documents detailing their amendments to the Commission proposal showed, the report added.