Roving Periscope: US, Australia try to wean India away from Russia

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Amid reports Russia is offering oil to India at a steep discount of USD 35 a barrel to the pre-Ukraine war prices—and that the visiting Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov could negotiate a bigger deal to replenish India’s strategic reserves—the US and Australia are making every effort to wean New Delhi away from Moscow.

Washington and Canberra tried to convince India—their partner along with Japan in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in the Indo-Pacific Region against China—to reconsider the Russian proposal that could undermine sanctions imposed by America and its allies.

“Now is the time to stand on the right side of history, and to stand with the United States and dozens of other countries, standing up for freedom, democracy, and sovereignty with the Ukrainian people, and not funding and fueling and aiding President Putin’s war,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told journalists in Washington on Wednesday.

While Daleep Singh, the Indian-American US Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics to the Biden Administration, traveled to New Delhi for deliberations, she also called reports of the arrangement “deeply disappointing.” But she added she hadn’t seen details, the media reported on Thursday.

Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan, at the same briefing, said it was important for democracies to work together “to keep the rules-based approach that we’ve had since the Second World War.”

The war has given India this rare opportunity to strike better arms deals with the US for the purchase of top-of-the-line weapons, including nuclear submarines, which America has so far sold to Australia. Interestingly, while America is lecturing India, it looked the other way when Germany and some other NATO allies refused to stop buying oil and gas from Russia.

India is the world’s largest buyer of Russian weapons and has also sought to buy cheap oil as fuel prices surge. At present, India, which imports over 80 percent of its oil requirements, gets less than one percent of it from Russia.

In the Russo-Ukraine war, India has adopted a ‘neutral’ stand. It supported calls for a cease-fire and a diplomatic solution and abstained at the United Nations on votes for draft resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion. Also, to demonstrate its neutrality, New Delhi abstained from a Russia-sponsored vote on the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Ukraine.

According to reports, India is also considering a proposal for rupee-rouble-denominated payments using an alternative to SWIFT after the US and its allies cut off seven Russian banks from using the Belgium-based cross-border payment system operator.

The Russian plan involves rupee-rouble-denominated payments using Moscow’s messaging system SPFS. Its central bank officials are may visit India next week to discuss the details, the reports said.

In the last few weeks, several top leaders have made a beeline to visit New Delhi. India’s middle-ground position on the Russo-Ukraine war has made it a center of diplomatic activity. Even China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi came calling for the first time since 2019, quickly followed by his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, seeking to shore up support.

The US and its allies have also stepped up engagement with India to influence Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Early in March, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited New Delhi, and his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison held a video summit with PM Modi. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his counterpart, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and discussed “the worsening humanitarian situation in Ukraine,” among other issues.

During Lavrov’s New Delhi trip, India is also hosting US Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Daleep Singh and British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Her office said she “will point to the importance of all countries reducing strategic dependency on Russia at this time of heightened global insecurity.”

India has pushed back against US concerns by noting that it requires Russian arms to counter China, particularly after border clashes in 2020, and alternatives (i.e. the US weapons) are too expensive.