India’s inventory of Russian-origin weapons grew over decades amid the lack of supply from the western nations, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on Monday in Australia’s Canberra. His comments come as the West continues to question Russia over its offensive in Ukraine. A debate on the dependence on Moscow for fuel and weapons was sparked worldwide after the Ukraine war began in February and questions are still being raised with no end in sight for the conflict.
“We have - as you know - a substantial inventory of Russian and Soviet-origin weapons. And that inventory grew for a variety of reasons. Not just for the merits of the weapons, but also because, over multiple decades, the western countries did not supply weapons to India,” S Jaishankar can be heard saying in a video shared by news agency ANI.
“I think we all - in international politics - deal with what we have. We make judgments which are reflective of both our future interests and current situation,” he added.
There have been demands in the recent past on waiver of sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) over New Delhi’s deal with Moscow of S-400 air defence systems.
Meanwhile, Jaishankar’s comments come days after he said the United States was not “fooling anyone” by saying that the support for Pakistan Air Force’s F-16s was meant for counterterrorism
{{/usCountry}}Meanwhile, Jaishankar’s comments come days after he said the United States was not “fooling anyone” by saying that the support for Pakistan Air Force’s F-16s was meant for counterterrorism
{{/usCountry}}During his US visit, asserting that the ties between Islamabad and Washington DC were not recent, he had said: “Very honestly, it is a relationship that has ended up serving neither Pakistan well nor serving American interests well. It is really for the US to reflect what the merits of the relationship [are] and what they get by keeping it sort of continuing.”
Earlier, Jaishankar had drawn praise for defending India's purchase of oil from Russia.