India under no moral conflict on buying Russian oil, reiterates Puri

Union petroleum and natural gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday reiterated that India is under no moral conflict to stop buying oil from Russia.

Responding to a question by CNN’s Becky Anderson who questioned Puri on whether India had “qualms” over purchasing so much from Russia, the minister said: “Absolutely none, there is no moral conflict, if somebody wants to take an ideological position…We don’t buy from X or Y, we buy whatever is available. I don’t do the buying, it’s the oil companies who do the buying.

Puri defended India’s purchases stating that India only bought 0.2 per cent, not 2 per cent of Russian oil and it buys in a quarter what Europe buys in one afternoon.