LONDON: It is time for Britain to have difficult conversations with India over buying oil from Russia, peers said in House of Lords this week, as anger mounted over the death of
Russian leader Alexei Navalny
.
"It is painful to see many friendly countries sharing a stage with the
Russian foreign minister
, meeting
Vladimir Putin
, liaising and trading with the Russian govt and supplying them with goods.
We still have to deal with them, of course, but they are dealing with a govt of thugs," Lord Jeremy Purvis of Tweed said in direct criticism of India during a debate about Navalny's death.
He called for sanctions to be applied to the whole military-industrial complex in Russia. "That will mean us having difficult conversations with those friendly nations that I referred to, including India..., with regard to the rupee-ruble swap for trading in oil for nearly two years now," he added.
Dame Margaret Hodge referred in House of Commons to a "loophole" that let countries such as China and India import Russian crude oil, process it and then sell it to the UK as refined oil. "In 2023 we sent something like £141 million in tax revenue to the Kremlin's war chest," she said.
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