India’s foreign minister said on Monday that the invasion of Ukraine “does not serve anyone’s interests”, but did not say whether New Delhi would support a resolution condemning the annexation of the Ukrainian territory.
“We have been very clearly against the conflict in Ukraine. We believe that this conflict serves no one’s interests. Not the participants, not even the international community,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in Canberra.
India felt “first-hand how much this has affected low-income countries, the challenges they face in terms of fuel, food and fertilizer,” he added.
At a press conference, Jaishankar was asked whether India would support a resolution, to be voted on this week, at the UN General Assembly condemning Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
“As a matter of prudence and politics, we do not anticipate our votes in advance,” said the minister, at the joint press conference with his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong, at the end of a bilateral meeting in the Australian parliament, during which He talked about the war in the Ukraine.
India is a major market for Russian arms and Jaishankar admitted that the relationship with Russia “certainly served Indian interests well”.
The head of Indian diplomacy stressed that the dependence on Russian weapons is due to a period of “several decades” in which Western countries “did not supply weapons to India and, in fact, preferred a military dictatorship as a partner”, in reference to neighboring Pakistan.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks to Russian President Vladimir Putin in September.
“As Prime Minister Modi told Putin, this is not the time for war,” Wong said.
India has chosen to abstain from voting on resolutions condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the UN Security Council.
The country took the same stance on the UN Human Rights Council’s appointment of an independent expert to heighten internal scrutiny of Russia on Friday.
Source: TSF
