Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Moscow next week for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid deepening China-Russia relations.
The timing of Modi’s visit is significant as it comes on the heels of deteriorating relations between the US and Russia and Moscow’s growing dependence on China.
A key challenge for India’s strategy is the deepening alignment between Russia and China. Following its isolation from the West due to the Ukraine conflict, Moscow has increasingly relied on Beijing for support. China has also become a primary buyer of Russian energy resources. This burgeoning Sino-Russian alliance poses a strategic difficulty for India, especially given Moscow’s subordinate position in the partnership. This raises concerns about Beijing potentially leveraging its influence over Moscow to exert pressure on New Delhi.
Trade and economic relations
Despite growing strategic and military ties with the US and other key Western players, India has refrained from publicly criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. India even ramped up the purchase of Russian crude despite initial pressure from the US, saying such a move is required to control domestic oil prices.
Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War, and New Delhi’s importance as a key trade partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. India has become a key buyer of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the US and its allies that shut most Western markets for Russian exports.
India’s crude oil import bill increased by 19 percent in April 2024, reaching $13 billion compared to the same month last year, according to a Financial Express (FE) report. This rise is primarily due to reduced discounts on Russian oil, despite the continued high volumes of imports. Russia, which became India’s top crude oil supplier following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, has significantly cut its discounts. The previous discounts of $8-10 per barrel have shrunk to $3-4.
As a result, India’s savings from discounted Russian crude decreased from $5.8 billion in April-August 2023 to $2 billion in September 2023-February 2024 period. In FY23, India saved approximately $5.1 billion due to these discounts, and $7.9 billion in the first eleven months of FY24
In the first days of the conflict, the United States-led Western alliance imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia, including a ban on key Russian banks from the world’s dominant financial messaging system, SWIFT. The sanctions dealt a body blow to Russia’s ability to trade with partners, including India, one of Russia’s closest allies going back to the Cold War era.
Before it attacked Ukraine, Russia was a relatively small trader with India, not figuring among India’s top 20 partners. In the 2021-22 financial year (1 April to 31 March), trade between India and Russia accounted for a meager 1.3 percent ($13 billion) of India’s total trade.
Where their relationship has been close has been in the supply of armaments, which has spanned decades. Since 2000, India has been the largest importer of Russian armaments, which was valued at $39.5 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Strategic interests & geopolitical rivalries
Washington has sought to isolate Moscow diplomatically and economically in response to the Ukraine war, imposing a range of sanctions and freezing Russian assets in foreign countries. This has led to heightened tensions between the two nations, making India’s
The United States views its partnership with India as vital in addressing its concerns about China’s disruptive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region. Meanwhile, the US also perceives Russia as a strategic threat. However, India has a longstanding and significant relationship with Russia, which remains a major supplier of arms and oil to New Delhi.
The visit will be his first trip to Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It also holds significance as it coincides with a NATO summit in Washington, where Ukraine is set to be a major agenda item. It would also help alleviate concerns that New Delhi is increasingly aligning itself with the West at the expense of its relationship with Moscow, thereby allowing China to gain ground, analysts noted.
It will be a good opportunity for Moscow to project in the media the image of President Putin receiving a leader of a country like India in the context of the Washington summit,” said Aleksei Zakharov, a Moscow-based expert on India told Reuters.
“India’s objective is to ensure that Russia is not in China’s corner and that, even if it does not explicitly support India, it maintains a permanent neutrality in the India-China territorial disputes.”
Ties between India and China have been frosty since a deadly border war in 2020. The leaders of Russia and India have held annual summits since 2000 but the last in-person meeting was in 2021, when Putin visited Delhi.
While the US has expressed concerns about India’s relations with Russia, it has also expressed confidence in India’s ability to navigate the relationship. Modi’s visit comes after a two-year hiatus in annual in-person summits with Putin. During this time, India has avoided criticizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, instead advocating for diplomatic solutions.
The next meeting had been due in Moscow in 2022 when Russia attacked Ukraine, but it did not happen, while Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping elevated their ties, pledging a “new era” of partnership in May.
The absence of Modi’s visits to Moscow had given “rise to speculation that there was some kind of drift in the Indo-Russia relationship,” said analyst Nandan Unnikrishnan, of the Observer Research Foundation think tank in New Delhi.
“So I think Modi’s visit will end that kind of speculation,” he said. “And we don’t want to spoil our relationship with any party, whether it’s Russia, the United States, or anyone because of another relationship.”
India has been actively expanding its diplomatic efforts beyond its immediate neighborhood, engaging in significant outreach to various regions. In recent years, India has been strengthening ties with Japan and Taiwan in the Pacific, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf states in the Middle East, and Western Europe. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also visited New Delhi recently. These efforts are particularly significant as they impact India’s standing in the Indo-Pacific and its relationships with the West. India aims to reduce its trade dependence on China, but its northern routes are blocked due to the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Alternative routes through Iran, Armenia, and Russia are becoming increasingly challenging. Instead, India is focusing on the Middle East as a natural corridor to connect with the West, accessing Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia through the Eastern Mediterranean.
This strategic approach also heightens India’s interest in East Africa. However, this expanding geopolitical connectivity places India at odds with China and Russia. The visit is supposed to strike a balance between the two countries to tackle the challenges of the new world order without compromising on bilateral relations.