With Blinken beside him, Jaishankar defends India's Russian oil purchase with 'I am smart enough' remark

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was asked during an interactive session alongside US Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken at a security conference in Munich about India continuing to buy crude oil from Russia despite the Vladimir Putin-led country's ongoing conflict with Ukraine.

"Why should it be a problem? I am smart enough to have multiple options. You should be admiring and not criticising. Is it a problem for others? I do not think so," Jaishankar said in his reply.

In that context, Jaishankar explained different pulls and pressures countries face, adding that different nations have different histories and challenges and it is very hard to have an unidimensional relationship.

"I do not want you, even inadvertently, to give the impression that we are purely and unsentimentally transactional. We are not. We get along with people, we believe in things, we share things, ...but there are times when you are located in different places, different levels of development, different experiences, all of that gets into it," he explained.

"So Life is complicated, life is differentiated," he said.

"Good partners provide choices, smart partners take some of those choices," Jaishankar said.

"I think it is important today to make a distinction between being non-West and anti-West. I would certainly characterise India as a country which is non-West but which has extremely strong relations with the Western countries that is getting better by the day," he added.

The bilateral trade volume between India and Russia witnessed a significant upswing in view of New Delhi's increasing procurement of discounted Russian crude oil.

This time last year, in an exclusive interview to PTI, US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey R Pyatt had said that there is "no contradiction at all" in India remaining one of the key global partners of the US and the country's increasing procurement of discounted crude oil from Russia.

The comments were the first clear articulation of the Biden administration's position on India's increasing procurement of discounted crude oil from Russia amid the Ukraine conflict.

Asked whether the US will impose secondary sanctions on Indian banks if they use the Rupee-Rouble mechanism set up by India and Russia for bilateral trade, the top diplomat chose not to speculate on it but said Washington's sanctions were only aimed at punishing Moscow.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy had also said the Indian companies are "very successfully" negotiating the price for Russian crude oil, which enabled Indian refiners to then put the product on the global market at a "very competitive and profitable price".

(With DH Web Desk inputs)