New Delhi: US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti set off a controversy with his latest remarks suggesting that India’s purchase of Russian crude oil was “the design of the policy” and was carried out with the implicit support of Washington DC.
“They bought Russian oil because we wanted somebody to buy Russian oil at a price cap; that was not a violation. It was the design of the policy because as the commodity we didn’t want the price of the commodity to go up, they fulfilled that,” Garcetti said Thursday at the 2024 Conference on Diversity in International Affairs organised by the think tank Centre for Foreign Relations (CFR).
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury had clarified that the US did not ask India to stop importing crude oil from Russia.
“It is important to us to keep the oil supply on the market. But what we want to do is limit Putin’s profit from it,” Eric Van Nostrand, Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the US Treasury was quoted as saying during a trip to India in April this year.
Calling it a “small victory” amid India’s deep historic ties with Russia, Garcetti said Thursday that “during the G20, they (Indian diplomats) were able to take Russia to the side on the matter of the statement on Ukraine, which was critical of Russia”.
Speaking of US-India ties, he called them “stronger than we imagine”.
Garcetti did, however, point out the ignorance among American individuals and those in academia and governance when it comes to understanding India. “India and Indians know America and Americans so much better than America and Americans know about India. We are pretty ignorant about India. We do not have a whole stable of Indianologists,” he said.
Reacting to Garcetti’s remarks about India’s purchase of Russian oil, former Indian Ambassador to Jordan, Libya and Malta and Anil Trigunayat — now a Distinguished Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation — wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “He (Garcetti) was speaking to his own constituency..Spin off. World knows how they hounded India when we started importing oil from Russia.”
My comment on #US Amb Garcetti's claims of a fixed match on Oil imports from #Russia @MEAIndia @PMOIndiahttps://t.co/fzBMLQgfRF
— Amb Rtn. Anil Trigunayat (@aniltrigunayat) May 12, 2024
In an interaction with the press in Cuttack earlier this month, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had referred to the “pressure” that was exerted on India to not buy crude oil from Russia.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and exports. In 2022, the US banned the import of Russian oil, gas, and other energy sources while the EU banned Russian and Russian-operated vessels from entering the European Union countries along with Russian coal. While India continued to buy oil from Russia, and emerged as one of the top buyers of Russian crude, in May 2023, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell urged the EU to take actions against Indian refined products derived from Russian crude entering the EU.
Calling India’s relationship with Russia based on “historic goodwill”, Garcetti justified India’s closeness with Russia on the demands of India’s border issues and the US’ absent foreign policy with India in the past.
On the subject of China’s growing influence, he said “we should learn from India, collaborate with them” and stressed the need for an equal relationship between the two countries.
“It is not the US’ responsibility, the only people who can save the country are the people within the country,” he said in response to a question about America’s approach to human rights concerns in India.
“It is (actually) not true that we are looking away. We have to be delicate about it. We speak about it in closed-door meetings,” he added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: US defied own sanctions, imported Russian crude worth nearly $3.5-mn in Oct-Nov, claims report