EAM Jaishankar gives befitting reply to West on India's oil imports from Russia

External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar showed the mirror to the West yet again after being questioned on India's fuel imports from Russia. During a joint press conference with Germany's foreign minister Annalena Baerbock in Delhi on Monday, Jaishankar laid out the import numbers by countries of the European Union while comparing them with India.

"The European Union, between February 24 and 17th November, has imported more fossil fuel from Russia than the next 10 countries combined", EAM Jaishankar said. "The oil import in European Union is six times what India has imported, gas is infinite times because we don't import it".

"I would urge you to look at these figures. There is a website called 'Russia Fossil Fuel Tracker' it would give you country-by-country data of who is really importing what and I suspect that might be very very helpful", he further said. 

Europe's reliance on Russia

As per the Fuel Tracker Dr. Jaishankar recommended, the EU countries have bought fossil fuel worth over 300 million euros as opposed to India (74 million euros) on November 24. While Europe has significantly reduced its dependence on Russia for fuel (oil, gas and coal), it still remains the largest importer of fuel from Russia. According to the website, Russia has earned 246 billion euros, since the start of the Ukraine war which started on February 24, out of which 122 billion was paid by Europe.

As of December 5, Germany and the Netherlands are the biggest consumers of Russian fuel followed by countries like Italy, Poland, France, Bulgaria, and Greece among others. 

The fuel from Russia flows into Europe through the Nord Stream pipelines which are witnessing a record amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) being imported to the EU nations. Notably, Europe has halted the imports of coal and oil but the inflow of LNG, which makes up 16% of the seaborne imports, has spiked 40% between the month of January and October this year, per Financial Times. 

Meanwhile, Russia was recently slapped with a $60 price cap per barrel for its oil, meaning it cannot sell its oil above this price, as a measure by the western countries to reduce Russia's earnings through export to other countries including India. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, responded by saying that Moscow will not accept the limit, per TASS News.