NEW DELHI: India has been subjected to “enormous pressure” by international powers due to its energy ties with Russia, said foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday, calling it “completely unjustified.”
“I think India is a great power that sets its own national interests, determines its own national interests, and chooses its own partners. And we know that India is being subject to enormous pressure, completely unjustified pressure in the international arena,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov was addressing concerns about PM Narendra Modi‘s recent trip to Moscow and the challenges India has encountered regarding its energy partnerships with Russia.
He termed Ukraine’s remarks on India after PM Modi’s Russia visit “insulting”.
“A Russian missile struck the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine, targeting young cancer patients. Many were buried under the rubble. It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day,” Ukrainian President Zelenskyy had said.
Saying that Ukrainian ambassadors were behaving like “hooligans”, Lavrov said, “So that was very insulting and the Ukrainian ambassador was called in” and the Indian Ministry of External Affairs “talked to him about how he should be behaving.”

‘West exhibiting displeasure to powers like China, India’
Lavrov lashed out at West saying that India knows “how to trade with whom and how to defend its national interests.”
“But the fact that the West is exhibiting its displeasure to powers – powers like China, like India – well, it shows their lack of erudition, their inability to partake in diplomacy, and also speak to the failure of political analysts. Because speaking this way, to these great Asian powers… you might dream of that but it’s really beneath them. It’s really beneath them behaving this way vis-a-vis any and all countries but in particular when they’re speaking in this way to these two giants, these two great powers,” he added.
Regarding India’s oil purchases from Russia, foreign minister S Jaishankar had said that his priority is to safeguard the interests of the Indian people, ensuring they do not bear the brunt of actions by other countries or regions when it comes to essential commodities like fertilizer and food.
“It’s not just that we buy oil from one country. We buy oil from multiple sources, but it is a sensible policy to go where we get the best deal in the interests of the Indian people and that is exactly what we are trying to do,” Jaishankar had said.