Russia to face significant challenges if world, including India, stops buying its oil: Zelenskyy

Russia will have “significant challenges” if the world, including India, stops buying subsidised oil from it, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday, 23 August.

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.

Imports from Russia, which were less than one per cent of the total oil imported in the pre-Ukraine war period, now make up for almost 40 per cent of India's total oil purchases.

On Friday, pointing out that there are very significant contracts between India and Russia vis-a-vis oil, the Ukrainian president said, “Putin is afraid of losing the economy, he has nothing except for oil, his main currency is oil. They do have a kind of energy-based economy, and they're export-oriented.”

“So, the countries importing energy resources from the Russian Federation stop, then they will be helping the whole world,” Zelenskyy said while addressing the travelling India media persons after his bilateral meeting with prime minister Narendra Modi.

Modi's nearly nine-hour visit to Ukraine, the first by an Indian prime minister since Ukraine's independence in 1991, came six weeks after he held summit talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin in July in Moscow.

Describing what he called “very significant challenges” that Russia faced, Zelenskyy said that with an energy-based economy, Russia is “paying for pensions, paying salaries. They are not selling their technologies, and their economy is very slow.”

Later, addressing the media persons after the bilateral talks, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also said that the question of India's energy trade with Russia did come up for discussions 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.

“In fact, 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 following some European nations shunning purchases from Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.