Sri Lanka may be forced to buy more oil from Russia as the island nation desperately searches for fuel amid an unprecedented economic crisis, the newly appointed prime minister told AP.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in an interview with the agency that at first he will turn to other sources, but he will be ready to buy more oil from Moscow. Western countries have largely stopped importing energy from Russia in line with the sanctions imposed over the situation around Ukraine.

Wickremesinghe also said he was ready to accept more financial aid from China despite his country's mounting debt. And while he acknowledged that Sri Lanka was in a predicament through its own fault, he noted that the war in Ukraine was exacerbating the situation, and that acute food shortages could last until 2024. He said that Russia also offered wheat to Sri Lanka.

The PM, who is also Sri Lanka's finance minister, spoke to the AP from his office in the capital, Colombo. He was appointed to this post by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resolve the economic crisis, which nearly devastated the country's foreign exchange reserves,

Sri Lanka has amassed $51 billion in foreign debt but has put on hold nearly $7 billion in debt due this year. Due to the huge debt, the country has no money for basic imports, so citizens can hardly buy food, fuel, medicines, even toilet paper and matches. Electricity shortages have led to power outages, and people are forced to wait in kilometer-long queues for days for cooking gas and petrol.

Two weeks ago, the country bought 90,000 metric tons (99,000 tons) of Russian oil to reopen its only refinery, the energy minister told reporters.

Wickremesinghe did not comment directly on these reports and said he did not know if new orders were in the pipeline. However, he noted that Sri Lanka is in desperate need of fuel and is currently trying to get oil and coal from the country's traditional suppliers in the Middle East.

Officials are negotiating with private suppliers, but Wickremesinghe said one of the problems they face is that there is a lot of oil going around that can be unofficially returned to Iran or Russia.