Emphasising on India's "global influence", Zelenskyy suggested that India can help end Moscow's war in Ukraine by halting the oil trade that significantly funds the Russian military.
"You can stop Vladimir Putin and halt his economy, and put him really in his place," Zelenskyy told members of the Indian media on Friday night in Kyiv, referring to his meeting with Modi earlier in the day.
"The role of India...if you will stop imports of oil, Putin will have huge challenges...," he said.
Ahead of Zelenskyy's press meet, addressing the media, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar mentioned that the Indian side had explained the country's oil trade with Russia.
"...what we did was to explain to the Ukrainian side what was the energy market scenario, the fact that today many energy producers are sanctioned, making the market potentially very tight; and why actually today there is a compulsion, in fact not just a compulsion, I mean why it is in the interest of the international economy as a whole, that oil prices remain reasonable and stable," Jaishankar said, adding, "...India is a big oil consumer. It's a big oil importer because we don't have oil. Now, it's not like there's a political strategy to buy oil. There is an oil strategy to buy oil. There's a market strategy to buy oil. So the figures of where we get our oil imports, go up and down. It depends on the state of the market. But it would definitely...I think the fact that the market is tight, that today big suppliers like Iran and Venezuela, who used to supply India, are constrained from operating freely in the markets, I think is a factor which needs to be taken into account."
India has now emerged as the top buyer of Russian oil, surpassing China. Russian crude made up a record 44% of India's overall imports in July, rising to a record 2.07 million barrels per day (bpd), 4.2% higher than in June and 12% more than a year ago, according to a Reuters report.
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