Moscow warns New Delhi against capping Russian energy prices

Moscow on Friday subtly warned New Delhi against joining the move by the western nations to cap the prices of energy exported by Russia.

Denis Alipov, Moscow’s envoy to New Delhi, said that Russia would stop supplying oil and gas to any nation that would join the move by the United States and other western nations to set a price limit on its energy exports. He, however, left it to India to react to the proposal mooted by Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Luis Ebrard Casaubón, at the United Nations General Assembly for the constitution of a committee with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and some other leaders as members and assign it with the task of mediating between Russia and Ukraine and bring the six-month-long war to an end.

“If we consider the prices are not fair and unacceptable to us, we would simply stop supplying the oil to global markets and to those countries that join the US initiative on the price cap," Alipov told journalists in New Delhi.

Also Read | Moscow is not threatening anybody with nuclear weapons: Russian deputy foreign minister

His comment came amid increasing pressure from the US and other western nations on India to join the G7's move to cap the prices of energy purchased from Russia, which continued its military operations in Ukraine.

The Finance Ministers of the G7 nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States and United Kingdom – early this month agreed that they would ban maritime transportation of crude oil and other petroleum products purchased above the price cap from Russia. The move is aimed at limiting Russia’s ability to fund its military operations in Ukraine. They, however, did not immediately set the price cap and rather left it to be decided by a broader coalition of nations.

Alipov said that if the western nations imposed the price cap, it would lead to acute shortage of oil in the global markets and the price would sharply go up. “India has so far taken a careful approach to this idea. It will not be beneficial to Indian interest,” said Moscow’s envoy to New Delhi. He expressed hope that India would pursue its own interest while deciding on buying energy from Russia.

New Delhi over the past few months drew flak from the US and the other western nations, not only for refusing to join them in condemning Russia for its aggression against Ukraine – primarily in view of its decades-old strategic partnership with and its dependence on the former Soviet Union nation for military hardware. India is also circumventing sanctions imposed by the US and the other western nations on Russia and continuing bilateral trade. It also increased oil and coal imports from Russia.

Though President Joe Biden’s administration has been asking India to join the coalition to cap the prices of energy from Russia, New Delhi so far maintained it would "carefully examine" the proposal before taking any decision.

Modi recently had held a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sideline of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at Samarkand in Uzbekistan.

“Today’s era is not of war”, the Prime Minister had told the Russian President during the meeting. The Prime Minister’s appeal to the Russian President was hailed by the media and the governments in the western nations.

“The West uses only those quotes that suit them while ignoring other parts (of Modi’s remarks during the meeting with Putin),” said Alipov.