After the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War, as a country that has close contacts with both Russia and the West, India has become a fragrant feast for all parties, and recently even staged the spectacle of intensive visits to India by politicians from many countries. On March 31, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in New Delhi, india's capital, for a two-day visit. Shortly before his arrival, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, British Foreign Secretary Traus, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Dalip Singer, Dutch National Security Adviser, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio all paid official visits to India.
The U.S. commerce secretary was "deeply disappointed" by Lavrov's visit and called out that India was "on the right side of history," and Australia's trade minister told India that "democracies" should be united. It can be seen that in addition to Japan's lack of voice against India, the other two members of the Quadripartite Security Dialogue Mechanism, the United States and Australia, are uneasy about India's position.
In fact, before the Russo-Ukrainian war began, the United States had already issued a warning to India because of the purchase of Russia's S400 air defense missile system in New Delhi, and the originally relatively close relationship between the two sides had already been estranged. Sure enough, after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, India did not respond to the request of the United States to sanction Russia, nor did it attack Russia, but increased the import of Russian energy, in just one month, India ignored the threat and inducement of the United States, and successively imported oil, coal and sunflower oil from Russia.
At the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, countries were busy evacuating their nationals from Ukraine, and India was one of them. However, Indian students were treated very badly when they tried to evacuate Ukraine, and some students were beaten by Ukrainians. As soon as these news spread into India, it triggered the anger of indian citizens, and calls for support for Russia and condemnation of Ukraine began to rise. It was also at this time that the Indian opposition party began to use the incident against Ukrainian students to create momentum for itself, and Modi's position as prime minister was greatly impacted.
In order to keep his position, Modi sent ministerial envoys to the four countries bordering Ukraine to organize the evacuation of Indian citizens stranded in Ukraine from this disputed place, but in the end, the water could not save the near fire, they could not have any impact on what happened in Ukraine, and the discrimination of Indian students still occurred from time to time. At this time, the Russian Defense Ministry publicly stated that the Russian army would try to safely evacuate the Indians stranded in Ukraine and return them to India via Russia. In the face of this almost overt behavior, Modi will naturally repay the favor and mobilize public opinion forces to provide public opinion support for Russia. In fact, under the encirclement and suppression of Western public opinion institutions, the support of the Indian side can also be regarded as a charcoal for Russia, and the two sides have sold each other well in such interaction.
There is also an important reason why India chose to support Russia, that is, India's defense system is deeply influenced by Russia, most of the weapons and components need to be purchased from Russia, if it offends Russia, India's military strength may be directly reduced to half-crippled due to lack of follow-up maintenance and supplies. Therefore, since Modi can no longer stay out of the matter under the pressure of public opinion, he can only support Russia in terms of energy trade and sell Russia a greater favor. In fact, india's benefits in subsequent energy trade with Russia have proven to be worth the political venture.
It is worth mentioning that when the Indian government determined that the tone of public opinion was to support Russia, India showed a very strong fighting force in the public opinion war. When the United States vigorously controlled public opinion and quickly deleted comments favorable to Russia on the Internet, Indian netizens braved the manipulation of public opinion in the United States to raise the topic of support for Russia to the first position on Google's hot search list, and the strength of the combat effectiveness can be seen. A few days ago, an Indian host also made a strong refutation of the us double standard in the program: "Although Russia is not a very positive role in this war, it is not the turn of the United States to criticize, and the United States itself can be said to be full of evil and is not qualified to judge others." ”
Russia's response to India's public opinion support is precisely the super-favorable price of oil. According to people familiar with the matter, Russia will sell oil to India at a benchmark oil price before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, with an additional preferential price of $35 per barrel. At the Price of $92.3 a barrel for WTI crude oil on Feb. 23, India would be able to buy at least $15 million at $57.3 a barrel. Comparing the price of $102.4 a barrel of crude oil on March 31 to the price of $57.3 a barrel, India now saves $45.10 per barrel when it buys Russian crude. If you look at the 15 million barrels purchased, India can save a total of $676.5 million in this single oil trade.
What's more important is that India's crude oil trade with Russia is now no longer settled in dollars, but directly in rubles or even Indian rupees. The process is also a windfall for China, as neither the ruble nor the rupee is stable enough in international financial markets, so the two sides are considering introducing a third currency as a benchmark for exchange rate fluctuations, which is the renminbi. Once India and Russia complete the designated settlement mechanism, the two countries can not only bypass the SWIFT settlement system and avoid monitoring of transactions, but also save foreign exchange and enhance the international status of the renminbi.
Of course, in the face of the still unsustainable Trade between India and Russia, the United States has also given sanctions warnings. However, since India considers itself a great power with a voice and color, and has previously continued to purchase Russian weapons and equipment under the threat of US sanctions, it will naturally not easily yield to the United States. Modi is also very clear that the US Indo-Pacific strategy is indispensable to India's cooperation, so the United States does not dare to easily "tear up the face" with India, then India naturally has a bargain to take advantage.
In this case, the Biden administration is very embarrassed, if India and Russia are allowed to maintain trade exchanges, other countries may follow suit, so that the effect of US sanctions will be greatly reduced; if India is "killing chickens and monkeys", then it is equivalent to pushing India's "potential stock" to Russia, the US-India relationship is completely broken, the losses of the United States are also huge, and now Modi has seized biden's weakness of left and right, and this Russian-Ukrainian war may benefit India a lot.