Ukraine: If the world stops buying its oil, Russia to face challenges, says Zelenskyy
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: If the world, including India, stops buying its subsidized oil, Russia will face major economic challenges, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday.
According to the media reports, during his bilateral talks with visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Zelenskyy said, Putin has nothing except for oil, and his main currency is oil.
The West has been critical of India’s continued buying of Russian oil despite sanctions on that country since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
India’s imports from Russia, which were less than one percent of the total oil imported in the pre-Ukraine war period, now make up for almost 40 percent of the South Asian nation’s total oil purchases.
On Friday, pointing out that there are very significant oil contracts between India and Russia, the Ukrainian President said, Putin is afraid of losing the economy. Russia has an energy-based economy, and it is export-oriented.
Zelenskyy’s remarks came as he addressed Indian media persons after his bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kyiv.
PM Modi’s nearly nine-hour visit to Ukraine, the first by an Indian PM since Ukraine’s independence from the then-USSR in 1991, came six weeks after his summit talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July in Moscow.
Zelenskyy said that, with an energy-based economy, Russia is paying for pensions and salaries. They are not selling their technologies, and their economy is very slow.
Later, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the media that the question of India’s energy trade with Russia came up for discussion between the two sides.
“I wouldn’t say at great length, but what we did … was to explain to the Ukrainian side what was the energy market scenario, the fact that today many energy producers are sanctioned, making the market potentially very tight; and why actually today there is a compulsion.
“Not just a compulsion, why it is in the interest of the international economy as a whole, that oil prices remain reasonable and stable,” he said.
India, the world’s third largest oil-consuming and importing nation, in July bought USD 2.8 billion worth of crude oil from Russia, second only to China which remains the largest importer of Russian oil, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said in a report.
Russia emerged as India’s biggest supplier of crude oil, which is converted into fuels like petrol and diesel in refineries, after Russian oil became available at a discount in the wake of some European nations shunning purchases from Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
