India working with Moscow, Kyiv to end war: EAM
During a standalone visit to Ukraine, India's External Affairs Minister held talks with Ukraine's President and Foreign Minister, describing the discussions as focused on approaches to ending the ongoing conflict, now in its fifth year.
India reiterated its long-standing position that the war cannot be resolved on the battlefield and that a solution must emerge through dialogue, diplomacy and negotiations.
The visit followed continued high-level engagement with Russia, reflecting India's practice of maintaining active channels with both parties to the conflict simultaneously.
India's continued purchase of discounted Russian crude oil was defended, with the argument made that oil purchases are not what is prolonging or resolving the conflict, in the context of external pressure (including tariff threats) linked to India's Russia-origin energy imports.
India's Strategic Autonomy and Multi-Alignment Doctrine
Strategic autonomy is India's foreign policy principle of retaining independent decision-making capacity in international affairs rather than aligning permanently with any single power bloc. It evolved from Cold War-era Non-Alignment into a more active "multi-alignment," where India engages simultaneously with competing or rival powers on issue-specific terms rather than abstaining from engagement altogether.
Simultaneous engagement with both Kyiv and Moscow, including a standalone ministerial visit to Ukraine while sustaining energy and defence ties with Russia, is a direct application of India's multi-alignment approach to a live conflict.
India-Russia "Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership"
India and Russia elevated their bilateral relationship to a "Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership" in 2010, the highest tier of partnership India accords to any country, reflecting decades of defence, energy and diplomatic cooperation dating to the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation (1971).
The reluctance to curtail Russian energy purchases despite external pressure reflects the weight of this decades-old strategic relationship, alongside the more immediate calculus of energy security.
India's Energy Security Policy and Diversification
Energy security refers to a country's ability to secure reliable, affordable and diversified energy supplies. India, importing roughly 85-88% of its crude oil needs, treats diversification of import sources and cost minimisation as core planks of energy security policy, especially given its status as a price-sensitive, import-dependent economy.
Key Details
- Russia's share of India's crude oil imports rose sharply after 2022 Western sanctions on Russian oil created deep discounts, climbing from under 3% before 2022 to over 35-55% of India's crude import basket at various points in 2025-26, making it India's single largest crude supplier by volume in recent periods.
- India maintains Strategic Petroleum Reserves (at Vishakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur) as a buffer stock mechanism, and has diversified suppliers beyond the traditional Gulf region to Russia, the US and African producers.
- The defence of continued Russian oil purchases has been framed around price stability for Indian consumers and the argument that unilateral secondary sanctions or tariffs on India's energy trade would not, by themselves, end the conflict.
The explicit defence of India's energy sourcing in the same visit where India offered to help end the war illustrates the core tension in India's position: supporting a diplomatic resolution to the conflict while resisting demands to alter its energy security choices as a precondition or pressure tool.
- Non-Aligned Movement founded: 1961 (Belgrade); India a founding member.
- India-Russia "Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership": declared 2010; underpinned by the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation.
- India imports roughly 85-88% of its crude oil requirement; Russia's share of India's crude imports rose from under 3% (pre-2022) to over one-third to more than half at various points through 2025-26.
- India maintains Strategic Petroleum Reserves at three locations: Visakhapatnam, Mangalore and Padur.
- The Russia-Ukraine conflict, which began in February 2022, was in its fifth year as of the current diplomatic visit.