Putin: Russia reliable partner for India

In a phone call with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin praised Russia as a reliable supplier. The world food market was shaken by the mistakes of some countries and the "illegal sanctions against Russia", but "Russia was and remains a reliable producer and supplier of grain, fertilizers and energy sources, including for the Indian partners," it said in a Kremlin statement on Friday.

Modi's office said the two men exchanged ideas on how to boost bilateral trade in agricultural commodities, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals.

According to the Kremlin, India buys 50 times the amount of Russian crude oil

India has already significantly increased imports of Russian oil in recent weeks. On June, 1 to 1.2 million barrels of Russian crude oil are said to have gone to India every day. That's around 50 times the amount India bought from Ukraine before the war. According to the report, the exchange of agricultural products has also increased significantly.

Modi was a guest at the G7 summit when the leading democracies campaigned for his approval of a price cap on Russian oil. As previously in the situation in Ukraine, Modi called for dialogue and diplomacy during the phone call, it said. India is neutral in the conflict because it has good relations with both Russia and the West. More than half of India's military equipment also comes from Russia.

At the same time, there is a dispute between Russia and the West about who is to blame for an impending hunger crisis due to rising food prices. Western states see the Russian attack on Ukraine and the blockade of Ukrainian grain shipments as a key reasons. Putin, in turn, blames Western sanctions.

Sanctions

According to Putin, the Western sanctions are also driving the deepening of Russia's relations with Belarus. "The unprecedented political and social pressure from the so-called collective West is urging us to speed up the unification process," Putin said at a bilateral forum. Together they want to minimize the damage caused by the illegal sanctions, make the production of the required products easier, develop new skills and expand cooperation with friendly countries.

The two neighbors signed a union treaty in 1997 intended to restore some of the once-close ties that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had meanwhile strived for more independence, but in the course of Western sanctions for the suppression of mass protests after his controversial re-election, he again sought closer ties to Russia.