AKIPRESS.COM - India's External Affairs Minister on Monday pushed back against criticism of his country's "longstanding" ties with Moscow, with pointed remarks defending New Delhi's purchasing of Russian arms, Asia Nikkei reported.

India and Russia have a long-standing relationship and that relationship has "certainly served our interests well," Indian minister S. Jaishankar said during a joint press conference in Canberra with his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong.

Jaishankar defended the use of Russian arms by Indian forces, saying Western countries did not supply weapons to New Delhi for decades.

“We have a substantial inventory of Soviet and Russian-origin weapons,” the minister added. “And that inventory actually grew for a variety of reasons. You know, the merits of the weapons systems themselves, but also because, Western countries did not supply weapons to India for decades, and in fact, they preferred a military partner in the region.”

Jaishankar on Monday made the comments while responding to a question on whether India should reduce its reliance on Russian weapons systems and reassess its relationship with the country during the war in Ukraine.

He said that in international politics, “we make judgments which are reflective of our future interests and current situation”.

Minister Jaishankar also reiterated that India is against the conflict in Ukraine. “We believe it does not serve the interest of anybody, the participants, or the international community,” he told reporters. “As the country of the global south, we have been seeing first-hand how much it has impacted low-income countries. As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Samarkand, this is not an era of war.”

As it faces sanctions from the West over its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is trying to forge closer ties with India and China. Both countries now account for over half of all Russia’s seaborne oil exports as Western countries buy less, according to the BBC.

Last month, Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov had said that Moscow delivered its most advanced long-range surface-to-air missile defence system S-400 to India on time despite the sanctions from Western countries.

Both Jaishankar and Wong indicated the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or QUAD isn’t affected by India’s relations with Russia. Jaishankar said the Quad is a mechanism focused on the Indo‑Pacific, an area where the convergence of interests between the grouping’s partners is strong, while Wong said the Quad is functioning extremely well due to the strategic trust among its partners.

Jaishankar said the AUKUS deal – whereby Australia will build nuclear-powered submarines using technology provided by the UK and the US – had come up for debate at the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which made an objective assessment of the issue. “I think we respected that and we urged other members to do so as well,” he added.

Wong said Australia has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons and remains compliant with the NPT.

India worked with other countries to block a resolution against AUKUS that was moved by China at the recent IAEA general conference.