India importing Russian oil is bad; West’s reaction to this is worse

India’s decision to buy 3 million barrels of oil from Russia’s Rosneft Oil Co at a 20 per cent discount to global prices is bad, but worse than that is the West’s reaction to this decision.

Our decision is bad on both moral and practical grounds. At present, the deal is small given our requirements. In January, we needed 4.5 barrels per day, so the size of the deal is insignificant but it can grow. This will mean benefits for India, but Russia will be the much bigger beneficiary, as this will help it lessen the pain the West has imposed on it because of its murderous attack on Ukraine.

In effect, the India-Russia oil deal will be at the cost of Ukraine, the brave nation suffering because of Vladimir Putin’s unconscionable megalomania. In fact, India’s stand on the entire Russia-Ukraine conflict is completely immoral—from its abstentions on the resolutions condemning Putin’s aggression at the UN to the statements made by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and other foreign office mandarins to the oil deal.

A nation that regards Mahatma Gandhi as its founding father has completely divorced foreign policy from his key doctrine of the harmony between ends and means. Of course, foreign policy can’t be idealistic; it has to take into account the imperatives of realpolitik; but the Ministry of External Affairs has failed here too.

For getting close to Russia, by buying its oil, will also alienate India from the West in the short, middle, and long term. This will adversely impact our economic development, for Western investors will find India’s proximity with Russia with suspicion. Further, this will also impact our defence purchases from Western nations, thus adversely affecting the quest for the holy grail our policy makers call ‘strategic autonomy.’

While India has blundered all the way, the West, including the United States, has not covered itself in glory in its dealings with Putin. In fact, it is primarily because of the West’s wrong policies and complacency that Putin has become a monster. America, Germany, and other countries have adopted the doctrines peddled by climate change fanatics.

Governments should be concerned about climate, but this should not eclipse other concerns. The fanatics, however, have thrust the policies which have made Western nations dependent on fossil fuel from Russia. How does that help climate? Is the Russian oil—or, for that matter, Saudi or Venezuelan oil—less polluting that American oil? It is a well-known fact that it is the money that Putin earns from selling oil that has emboldened him in his adventurism.

Worse, Europe continues to import oil from Russia. So on what moral grounds can it lecture India not to do so?