Putin and Modi deepen relationship that has drawn Trump’s anger
Vladimir Putin is embarking on a high-profile visit to India, aiming to protect a crucial economic and diplomatic partnership.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is embarking on a high-profile visit to India, aiming to protect a partnership that is a crucial economic and diplomatic lifeline for Moscow but one that has drawn the ire of the Trump administration.
Mr Putin arrived in New Delhi Thursday evening for a two-day summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during which the Russian president is expected to offer cheap oil and Russia’s latest arms in an effort to bolster the longstanding relationship between the two powers.
The meeting comes at a delicate time for both countries. Earlier this week, Russian officials held a marathon meeting with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that failed to reach a deal to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine. While those talks failed, Russia is nonetheless eager to avoid antagonising President Trump or bringing fresh US pressure on Moscow to end the fighting in Ukraine, according to diplomats.
Meanwhile, India’s relationship with the US is at a low point, in part due to New Delhi’s ties with Moscow. Mr Trump has slapped 50 per cent tariffs on imports of Indian goods as punishment for India’s huge purchases of Russian oil. Since the summer, Mr Modi has been seeking to repair ties with the US and strike a deal to slash the tariffs.
The bond between India and Russia runs deep. The ties blossomed over the decades through arms deals – India’s military has historically relied heavily on Russian weapons – and diplomatic cover.
In the last two decades, however, India has drawn considerably closer to the US, a shift accelerated by their shared concern over China’s economic and military rise.
For that reason, Mr Trump’s decision this summer to slap stiff tariffs on India took Mr Modi by surprise.
The White House sees reducing Russia’s oil earnings as key to pushing Moscow to end its war in Ukraine. While China is the biggest buyer of Russian oil, the US has largely heaped pressure on India, with one administration official branding it a “laundromat for the Kremlin.” Before the war started in 2022, 2 per cent of India’s oil purchases came from Russia, but that rose to one-third of its oil imports by this year.
Then, in the autumn, the administration said it would sanction anyone undertaking trade with Russian state oil firms Rosneft and Lukoil. Wary of falling afoul of US sanctions, India is likely to cut imports of Russian oil to about a million barrels a day this month, from an average of 1.8 million barrels a day in November, according to Kpler.
Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, which accounted for about a third of India’s Russian oil imports, said last month it would stop importing Russian crude to its export facility.
Energy analysts expect India – which requires huge energy imports to support its 1.4 billion people – won’t ultimately fall back to pre-2022 levels, but will continue to buy a significant portion of Russian oil through non-sanctioned entities. “Political leaders will not want to be seen as bending down to US sanctions,” wrote Sumit Ritolia, an analyst at Kpler, in a recent research note.
While the oil purchases have drawn the most attention, Mr Trump has also expressed unhappiness over India’s arms purchases from Russia.
Ahead of Mr Putin’s arrival in New Delhi, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov signalled that Moscow had high hopes for the summit, saying Russian jet fighters and missile air-defence systems would be part of talks this week.
However, Indian officials have quietly discouraged the idea that any such agreements will emerge during the visit.
Tina Dolbaia, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think tank, says India would need tacit US approval to pursue major new deals. A US law allows for sanctions on countries that purchase major defence hardware from Russia.
“India could also use these deals that Russia will offer to them as a bargaining chip to go back to the Americans” and seek more advanced US systems instead, Dolbaia said.
India hasn’t agreed to major new arms deals with Russia in years. The Russians have yet to deliver on an earlier agreement for India to buy Russian S-400 missile air-defence systems, a deal that was exempted from sanctions by the US.
Yet even with energy purchases poised to decline and doubts about new purchases of Russian arms, the relationship between India and Russia is on an upswing, said Aleksei Zakharov, a fellow with New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation.
For about two years after Russia’s invasion, “India was really hesitant to move ahead with deals with Russia or limited meetings at the leadership level,” said Zakharov.
But Mr Modi’s visit to Moscow in July 2024, soon after he was re-elected for a third term, marked a change, Zakharov said. In recent months, India has called the relationship with Russia one of its most reliable partnerships. “The trajectory of the relationship is upward,” said Zakharov.
Moscow, which is eager to reduce its economic dependence on China, has telegraphed to India its desire to expand ties and diversify its imports from the country.
“For Russia, it’s important to remain a major supplier of commodities to India but also bring more industrial and technological goods from India to the Russian market and stimulate competition with Chinese exports,” said Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics.
For its part, India is eager to export more to Russia, which buys only a few billion dollars of goods from the Asian giant.
Political experts say any progress toward a peace deal on Ukraine would give India more breathing room than it had in August, when Mr Trump’s ire over India’s ties with Russia ran high. “That gives some amount of space for India to manoeuvre,” said Harsh Pant, a visiting professor at the India Institute at King’s College London.
Dow Jones
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