Interests, not values, underpin Asia’s ambivalence about Russia

HAVING FOUND itself at a crossroads, Indonesia is attempting to go in every direction at once. On March 2nd it joined much of the world in deploring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A few days later its president, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, said Russia and Ukraine were both friends of Indonesia. By the middle of April, against a domestic backdrop of protests against rising costs, a fierce debate had broken out within government about whether to take advantage of the crisis by buying discounted Russian oil, with payments perhaps routed through India.