India on Saturday welcomed the US-Russia Alaska summit though no major breakthrough on Ukraine was announced after the nearly three-hour engagement, prolonging New Delhi’s anxiety about a further rise in US tariffs.
The Donald Trump administration has threatened an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian imports from August 27 as a penalty for buying Russian oil.
“India welcomes the summit meeting in Alaska between US President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Their leadership in the pursuit of peace is highly commendable,” the external affairs ministry spokesperson said in a suo motu statement.
“India appreciates the progress made in the summit. The way forward can only be through dialogue and diplomacy. The world wants to see an early end to the conflict in Ukraine.”
The statement was issued well after the conclusion of the summit, and followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s confirmation that he would be travelling to Washington to meet Trump on Monday as part of efforts to set up a trilateral meeting with Putin.
At the same time, Zelensky stressed the need to keep the pressure up on Russia with a call for strengthening the sanctions if Moscow rejects a trilateral meeting.
Putin had earlier refused to have a trilateral meeting on the grounds that it was still early days.
India, which has always advocated dialogue and diplomacy on the Ukraine conflict, had some positives to clutch on to from the joint media briefing given by Putin and Trump, and from the indications that all stakeholders intended to stay the course, at least for now.
Putin said: “I expect that today’s agreements will be the starting point not only for a solution of the Ukrainian issue but also business and pragmatic relations between Russia and the US.”
Trump was measured by his own standards when he called it a “productive” meeting.
“There were many, many points that we agreed on…. We haven’t quite got there but we have made some headway. So there’s no deal until there’s a deal…,” he said.
Trump’s remarks in two separate interviews with Fox News before and after the Alaska meeting held out a sliver of hope that secondary sanctions might not be necessary.
Replying to a question on his pre-summit statement about “severe” consequences for Russia if the meeting did not go well, Trump’s stand on secondary sanctions on China was: “Because of what happened today, I may not have to think about it. I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something.”
Earlier, on his way to Alaska, Trump had told another interviewer from Fox News that Putin had lost an “oil client, which is India, which is doing about 40 per cent of the oil”.
“China is doing a lot…. If I did secondary sanctions or what is called secondary tariffs, it would be very devastating from their standpoint,” he added. “If I have to do it, I’ll do it. Maybe, I won’t have to do it.”
India has denied reports of cutting back on oil purchases from Russia under pressure from the US, though Indian companies have stopped buying oil from Iran and Venezuela over the past decade for fear of US sanctions.
In his post-summit interview with Fox News, the US President repeated his claim about brokering peace between India and Pakistan.
“Take a look at India and Pakistan. They were shooting down airplanes already, and that would have been, maybe, nuclear. I would have said it was going to go nuclear, and I was able to get it done,” he said.
