India has friendly relations with both the United States and Russia that stand on their own merit, the foreign ministry told congress on Thursday, in reply to a query whether the Ukraine war had affected ties.
Over the once decade, India has grown near to the United States in the face of a resurgent China across the border, but Russia remains its biggest arms supplier.
India is the only major country near to the United States not to have condemned Russia’s irruption of Ukraine or assessed any warrants on it.
“ India has called for immediate conclusion of conflict and return to the path of tactfulness and dialogue with respect to the conflict in Ukraine,” inferior foreign minister Meenakashi Lekhi told congress.
“ India has near and friendly relations with both the US and Russia,” she added. “ They stand on their own merit.”
After a visit this week to New Delhi, a US diplomat said the country stood ready to help India with further inventories of military tackle and energy to reduce its reliance on Russia.
From rifles to rockets, about 60 per cent of India’s military inventories come from Russia, which judges say are more cost effective than those from the United States.
The development comes two days after US President Joe Biden said that India was an exception among Washington’s abettors with its “ shaky” response to the Russian irruption of Ukraine.
Addressing a meeting of US business leaders in Washington Monday, Biden said there had been “ a united front throughout Nato and in the Pacific”.
“ The Quadrangle is, with the possible exception of India being kindly shaky on some of this, but Japan has been extremely strong – so has Australia – in terms of dealing with Putin’s aggression.”
He added that Putin was “ counting on being suitable to resolve Nato” and rather, “ Nato has noway been stronger, more united, in its entire history than it’s moment.”
New Delhi, which historically has had close ties with Moscow, called for an end to the violence in Ukraine but has stopped suddenly of condemning Russia’s irruption, abstaining in three votes at the United Nations.
