Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar stated on Monday in Canberra, Australia, that India’s stockpile of weapons of Russian origin grew over decades due to a lack of supply from western countries. His remarks come at a time when the West is still challenging Russia over its incursion into Ukraine. Since the start of the crisis in the Ukraine in February, doubts about the world’s continued reliance on Moscow for energy and weapons have continued to be raised.
“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 the media.
“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.
In light of New Delhi’s purchase of S-400 air defence systems from Moscow, there have recently been calls for restrictions imposed by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) to be waived.
Jaishankar made his remarks a few days after claiming that the United States was not “fooling anyone” when it claimed that its support for the Pakistan Air Force’s F-16s was intended to fight terrorism.
During his US visit, asserting that the ties between Islamabad and Washington DC were not recent, he said: “Very honestly, it is a relationship that has ended up serving neither Pakistan well nor American interests well. It is really for the US to reflect on what the merits of the relationship [are] and what they get by keeping it sort of continuing.”
Jaishankar had previously received acclaim for defending India’s oil purchase from Russia.