Critisizing US demands on tariffs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that these pressure will not succeed and countries like India and China will not yield to ultimatums.
Speaking at ‘The Great Game’ programme of Russia’s main Channel 1 TV, Lavrov explained how the ‘demands’ that US has put forth for countries like China and India to stop purchasing Russian energy are pushing the countries further away.
“It forces them to look for new energy markets, new resources, and forces them to pay more,” the Russian minister said.
For the past few weeks, US has been criticizing India for purchasing oil from Russia and claimed that India has been funding Ukraine war.
Recently, the US government has pushed additional 25 per cent tariffs on Indian export making it 50 per cent, sending frenzy into the export market of India.
Lavrov cautioned the US that there has been ‘moral and political’ opposition related to the approach chosen by them. “Both China and India are ancient civilisations, and to use this language with them, ‘either stop doing what I don’t like, or I’ll impose tariffs on you’ well, that won’t work.”
Amid threats of new sanctions on Russia, Lavrov said he does not see any problem.
“Frankly speaking, I don’t see any problem with the new sanctions imposed on Russia. An enormous amount of sanctions, unprecedented for that period, were imposed during President Donald Trump’s first term,” he said.
“We have started to draw conclusions from the situation when the West imposed these sanctions. Later, during President Joe Biden’s term, sanctions were used as a replacement for any diplomatic effort. There was no search for a compromise,” Lavrov said.
Although the Trump administration has not yet imposed tariffs on China for its purchase of Russian oil, the US president has been pushing for it.
