More Indian Imports Of Venezuelan Oil Wouldn’t Mean That India Is Drifting Away From Russia

ENB Pub Note: This article is republished from Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter on Substack, and he brings up some great points.

That false narrative might still gain traction, however, due to misguided Russian soft power policies.

Indian Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (East) Rudrendra Tandon said during Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez’s recent visit that there’s “perfect complementarity” in the energy sector between their countries. He’s right too since India is one of the world’s largest energy importers and Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. It was even foreseen in mid-February that “India Might Soon Replace Russian Oil With Venezuelan At Scale After All” following the US’ capture of Venezuela’s oil sector.

At present, Russia is still India’s largest crude oil supplier, but that’s largely due to the US extending its sanctions waiver for the purchase of such resources from that country. Prior to promulgating the first waiver shortly after the start of the Third Gulf War, the trend from last summer’s punitive US tariffs on India for these purchases till then was for India to reduce its import of Russian oil, all while claiming that US pressure had nothing to do with its decision. Few, including in Russia, believed that was the case.

After all, India stood to lose a lot more in economic-financial terms from the US’ punitive 25% tariffs than from purchasing more expensive oil from other suppliers, plus the US could have accelerated last year’s pivot to Pakistan in ways that could have further worsened India’s national security interests. It therefore made sense, per its rational cost-benefit calculation, to reduce imports of Russian oil under US pressure. Like all countries, India prioritizes its national interests, and it shouldn’t be negatively judged for that.

At the same time, “The Third Gulf War Prompted Yet Another Recalibration Of India’s Russian-US Balancing Act”, albeit this time in Russia’s favor. Moreover, “Top Russian & Indian Think Tanks Devised A Plan For Rebalancing Economic Relations” in spring, and Putin plans to visit India later this year for the BRICS Leaders’ Summit. Bilateral ties provably remain strong, so it was thus bonafide fake news for Pepe Escobar to declare earlier this year that India “betrayed” Russia, yet countless folks were misled by him.

Nevertheless, his narrative might regain traction if Indian imports of Russian oil decline in the future upon the US inevitably ending its waiver for the purchase of such resources from that country after some time, in which case Venezuelan oil might replace Russian at scale after all exactly as was earlier foreseen. In that event, the Alt-Media Community might falsely conclude that India did indeed “betray” Russia, possibly influenced into thinking so by state-adjacent top “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” (NRPR) like Pepe.

The problem is that Russia’s “soft power supervisors” – the members of its publicly financed media, officialdom, and conference/forum organizers who are in touch with top NRPR influencers – aren’t interested in them accurately portraying Russian policy. That’s why they don’t nudge those who misportray it into doing so. It’s more important for them that folks like Russia on false premises, such as it disliking India (the sentiment of which is now popular), than being “bored by the truth” of its policies.

The resultant artificial reality about Russian interests and policy that’s created through these means has been coined “Potemkinism”, with the most infamous example being the easily disproven claim (now treated as dogma by many NRPRs) that Putin is an anti-Zionist secretly allied with Iran against Israel. Likewise, so too might it soon become dogma that Russia supposedly at minimum dislikes India, the narrative of which might wildly proliferate if India replaces Russia with Venezuela as its top oil supplier.