Natural to look for 'good deals' amid shooting oil prices: Jaishankar's response to Western pressure to quit discounted oil deal with Russia

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar made the remarks after holding a meeting with visiting British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss at the India-UK Strategic Futures Forum where they discussed a wide range of issues.

"When the oil prices go up, I think it is natural for countries to go out into the market and look for what are the good deals for their people," Jaishankar was quoted as saying by PTI.

"But I am pretty sure if we wait for two or three months and actually look at who are the big buyers of Russian oil and gas, I suspect the list would not be too different from what it used to be and I suspect we won't be in the top 10 on that list," he said.

Jaishankar's comments at a time when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in India on a two-day visit and is likely to push for a rouble-rupee-denominated payment mechanism for bilateral trade.

At the India-UK forum Truss said UK is going to end its dependence on Russian oil by the end of this year and added that India is a sovereign nation and she is not going to tell it what to do.

"We are reducing and eliminating our dependence on Russian oil and gas. That takes time. That is also true for other countries and the important thing for me is that the G7 has set a timetable to end that dependency and sent a strong signal in the market," Truss said.

"There have been some pretty remarkable changes. Germany has changed its entire energy and defence policy as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. We need to keep doing that," she said.

At the forum Jaishankar said: "It is interesting because we have seen for some time what looks almost like a campaign on this issue. I was reading a report today that in March, Europe has bought, I think, 15 percent more oil and gas from Russia than it did the month before.

"If you look at the major buyers of oil and gas from Russia, I think you will find most of them are in Europe," he added.

Jaishankar noted that India gets most of its crude oil supplies from the Middle East and around 7.5 to 8 percent from the US, while the purchases from Russia in the past were less than one percent.

While pressing for efforts to make the sanctions against Russia effective to put pressure on Vladimir Putin, Truss said strengthening her country's relationship with India has become more important than it was before.

Truss said that Russia's success in Ukraine could send a wrong message to aggressors across the world and the current conflict has a far-reaching impact affecting almost every country.

She also emphasized that the impact of the Ukraine crisis will not be limited to Europe and will have far-reaching consequences.

"The idea that somehow we should only focus on Europe because of this crisis is completely wrong. I am afraid to say that the implications of this crisis are far-reaching. We are seeing global food security threatened, global energy security threatened," she said.

To this, Jaishankar said that what happened in Afghanistan last summer had a very strong impact on India, but it was not the case for Europe.