What you need to know about India-Russia relations – DW – 05/07/2024

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Russia next week, marking his first visit to Moscow since the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Modi, who was returned to power last month as leader of the world’s most populous country, is walking a tightrope between maintaining a long-standing partnership with Moscow and seeking closer security ties with the West.

The war in Ukraine has drawn attention to Russia’s close ties with India, as kyiv’s Western partners urge Modi’s government to condemn the invasion and pressure the Kremlin.

New Delhi has so far refrained from explicitly condemning Russia for its actions in Ukraine. It has also abstained from voting on UN resolutions criticizing Moscow.

Modi’s visit to Russia “is aimed at showcasing India’s strategic independence,” Gulshan Sachdeva, a professor at the Centre for European Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told DW.

“While it further strengthens bilateral ties, it will be closely watched internationally amid growing tensions with Russia.”

Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, founder and president of Mantraya, an independent research forum, told DW that Modi’s trip “will raise concerns in the West.”

But, she added, “New Delhi has always used the rationale of ‘strategic autonomy’ to maintain its ties with non-Western countries.”

India and Russia have long-standing ties

Ahead of Modi’s visit, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar highlighted the strong historical cooperation between India and Russia and the significant growth in their economic relations.

“It’s a way of taking stock of any relationship… one of the biggest changes has been that our economic relationship with Russia has grown significantly… at the leadership level, it will be a great opportunity for Prime Minister Modi and President (Vladimir) Putin to sit down and talk to each other directly,” he told news agency ANI.

India has long-standing political and strategic ties with Russia, dating back to the Cold War era.

Moscow has long been India’s largest arms supplier.

But Russia’s share of Indian arms imports has declined significantly in recent years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), from 76% in 2009-13 to 36% in 2019-23.

In recent years, India has sought to diversify its foreign sources of military equipment, increasingly purchasing weapons from Western countries such as France and the United States.

In recent years, India has also increased its purchases of discounted Russian oil.

The development provided a much-needed export market for Moscow after it was cut off from traditional buyers in Europe.

This has radically reshaped energy ties, with India saving billions of dollars while bolstering Moscow’s coffers.

Anil Wadhwa, a former Indian diplomat, told DW that both sides would be keen to continue their partnership and increase investment in each other’s economies despite the threat of Western sanctions.

He said cooperation in oil and gas as well as defence would figure high on Modi and Putin’s agenda.

“Equally important will be the Russian position on the expansion of BRICS, relations with China and prospects for cooperation in new areas such as connectivity between the two countries.”

India wary of Sino-Russian relations

Sachdeva said Modi and Putin are likely to take India-Russia relations to a higher level due to increased energy trade and operationalisation of transport corridors.

“India fears that Western pressure on Russia will make Moscow increasingly dependent on China,” he said, adding: “India does not support the Western goal of a Russian ‘strategic defeat’, believing that a stronger Russia is essential to maintaining a multipolar world.”

The view among Indian foreign policy makers is that New Delhi will find itself in a vulnerable position if Russia emerges from its war in Ukraine defeated, weakened and even more beholden to China.

The deepening of ties between Moscow and Beijing since the start of the war in Ukraine has already raised concerns in New Delhi.

China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, have territorial disputes that have led to skirmishes along their shared border.

New Delhi and Beijing are also geostrategic rivals competing for political and economic influence in Asia.

“China is something that dominates the Indian strategic mind-space. A formal alliance between Russia and China is the worst-case scenario for India… We have to put all our energy into ensuring that that kind of scenario does not happen,” Pankaj Saran, India’s former deputy national security adviser, said at a discussion hosted by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in April.

The challenges of a changing geopolitical landscape

Modi on Thursday missed the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security group created by Moscow and Beijing to counter the Western-led world order.

Modi sent his foreign minister to the SCO meeting, which was attended by Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Modi has regularly attended the summit in the past, raising questions about why he was absent this time.

Indian media speculated that the newly re-elected Modi was busy with last week’s parliamentary session.

D. Bala Venkatesh Varma, who served as India’s ambassador to Russia from 2019 to 2021, said the Modi-Putin summit would “set the tone” for bilateral relations in the next decade.

He stressed that both sides face the challenge of adapting to a changing geopolitical landscape.

“The rise of China, European security in the shadow of the Ukrainian conflict and uncertainty over US leadership: this summit will set the tone for Indo-Russian relations for years to come,” Varma told DW.

From Moscow, Modi will travel to Vienna for the first visit to the Austrian capital by an Indian leader since Indira Gandhi in 1983.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru