India emerges as key global player amid Russia's war in Ukraine

Seated in the domed red sandstone government building unveiled by the British Raj less than two decades before India shed imperial rule, S. Jaishankar, India's foreign minister, need not recall how the tides of history sweep away outdated systems to usher in the new.

Tel, he believes , is today's transformative moment. A "world order that is still very, very deeply Western", as he put it in an interview, is being driven out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of "multi-alignment" where countries will choose their own "special policies, preferences and interests".

This is certainly what India has been doing since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24. rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, made Moscow its biggest supplier of oil, and rejected the West's perceived hypocrisy. Far from apologetic, his tone was unapologetic and his self-interest largely bare.

"I would still like to see a more rules-based world," M Jaishankar told me. "But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on very deep interests, at that point, I'm afraid it's important to challenge that and, if necessary, to denounce it. ."

In other words, with its nearly 1.4 billion inhabitants, which will soon overtake China as The world's most populous country, India needs cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7% annual growth and lift millions of people out of poverty. This need is non-negotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it needs, even a little more for export. For Mr Jaishankar, the time has come to think that "Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems", as he said in June.

The war in Ukraine, which sparked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, sparked different anger elsewhere, centered on a skewed global distribution of power and exceeded. As Western sanctions on Russia have driven up energy, food and fertilizer costs, causing severe economic hardship in poorer countries, resentment from the United States and Europe has sparked in Asia and Africa.

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