When President Vladimir Putin’s plane touches down in New Delhi on Thursday, he will be greeted with a lavish ceremony reserved for one of India’s most loyal partners. But his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is also seeking to maintain deep strategic ties with the United States, its main global rival.
This is India’s diplomatic split screen. On the one hand, it could buy Russia’s state-of-the-art fighter jets, cheap oil, and the ironclad friendships forged during the Cold War. On the other, there are hopes for U.S. cooperation in technology, trade and investment, and for President Donald Trump to lift punitive tariffs.
In the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, India has leveraged its strategic assets of a huge market and key location in the Indo-Pacific to attract attention from both the White House and the Kremlin.
But Putin’s first visit to India since the start of the war comes at a tense time for Modi.
New Delhi is negotiating a long-awaited trade deal with Washington after being hit with 50% tariffs. Half of that was a direct punishment for New Delhi’s continued purchase of Russian oil at discounted prices.
New Delhi recently appeared to appease the US, cutting its purchases of Russian oil and agreeing to buy 2.2 million tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas from the US.
But high on the agenda of Putin’s visit is further defense deals with Russia and the purchase of weapons that India considers essential to protect it from Pakistan and China, where border tensions have escalated in recent years.
This highlights how India must navigate its complex neighbourhood. Russia is also a close partner of China, while China is Pakistan’s main source of arms supplies.
Kanti Vajpayee, a visiting professor of international relations at Ashoka University, said by rolling out the red carpet for Putin, New Delhi is sending a signal to both the West and China that “it has options.”
“This is a sign of India’s readiness to cooperate with Russia,” he said, even as the Russian government faces widespread international condemnation. “Apart from oil and arms, this is a diplomatic hedge, showing Beijing and Washington that Delhi has a third option and is willing to negotiate a little more.”
The close relationship between India and Russia was forged during the Cold War. Although the newly independent nation was officially “non-aligned” at the time, it received much industrial and economic aid from the Soviet Union as India charted its new national trajectory.
However, Washington’s increasing military and financial support for Pakistan, India’s archrival, led to a tilt toward Moscow in the 1970s. Russia began supplying arms to India, and Russia became a reliable counterweight, a role it has cherished ever since.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a think tank that tracks global arms sales, India’s procurement of Russian arms has declined over the past four years, but Russia remains its largest military supplier.
Much of this Russian hardware is being purchased with India’s rival China in mind. China has emerged as one of Moscow’s closest partners in recent years, but it has long had border tensions with India.
Meanwhile, Beijing is a major arms supplier to India’s arch-rival Pakistan, including jets that the Pakistani military said it used to shoot down an Indian fighter jet during a brief border conflict earlier this year. One of the jets was a Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30, Pakistani officials said.
According to Reuters, Russian Su-30 fighter jets currently make up the bulk of India’s 29 fighter squadrons.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that this week’s talks with Russia are likely to feature a possible arms deal for the advanced Su-57 fighter jet.
But in recent months, it has been New Delhi’s economic ties with Moscow that have been making headlines and causing the biggest headaches.
When Russian oil prices plummeted due to Western sanctions over the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, India seized the opportunity. Eager to fuel its booming economy and secure bargains to support its population of more than 1.4 billion people, the country has significantly increased its purchases of Russian crude oil, becoming one of the Kremlin’s top buyers.
In response to criticism from Western countries, India has consistently maintained that its primary responsibility lies with its own people and economy.
“We have hundreds of millions of poor people in our country. We need to lift them above the poverty line… To address that, India needs to maintain decent cooperation with all the big powers,” said Nandan Unnikrishnan, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) think tank in New Delhi.
But in August, President Trump’s patience ran thin and he imposed 50% tariffs on India. This is a punishment not only for the trade deficit with the US, but also for the purchase of Russian oil.
And in October, President Trump announced U.S. sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest oil companies, creating an immediate ripple in India’s offices, with trade and refining officials telling Reuters that India’s oil imports in December were on track to hit the lowest level in at least three years.
Financial pressure from Washington is not only straining relations, but also appears to be accelerating détente with Beijing. Days after President Trump imposed tariffs on India, Mr. Modi traveled to China for the first time in seven years to attend a summit hosted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, aimed at demonstrating that Beijing is a world leader capable of taking on Western institutions.
This same summit was also the last time Mr. Modi and Mr. Putin met. The two smiled broadly for the cameras and exchanged a warm, firm handshake before retreating from public view and returning to the Russian president’s limousine for an hour-long private discussion.
“I think people understand what India was trying to do in India and are looking a little down their noses at the West,” Ashoka University’s Vajpayee said.
The Trump and Joe Biden administrations viewed India as an important counterweight to China and strengthened strategic ties with New Delhi through technology transfers and joint military exercises.
Mr. Modi also shared a close relationship with Mr. Trump, a fellow right-wing populist with a talent for turning foreign relations into a grand spectacle. The Indian leader hosted the US president in his first term at a rally in Houston titled “Howdy Modi!” and abandoned diplomatic protocol to campaign for his opponent’s second term.
In a sign that relations are easing, India and the United States recently agreed to a new 10-year framework aimed at deepening industrial cooperation, technology and information sharing.
And New Delhi is still negotiating the outlines of a trade deal with Washington, with the country’s Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal saying at an event last week that he expected a deal to be finalized by the end of this year.
But from India’s perspective, such a move does not signal a break with other partners. As ORF’s Unnikrishnan points out, “There is no contradiction in having an ambitious trade deal with the United States and a cooperative relationship with Russia.”
Analysts say this confidence is strengthened by understanding within the Kremlin.
“There are close ties between New Delhi and Moscow,” Vajpayee said. “Putin knows that Prime Minister Modi is under a lot of pressure on the ground. He certainly has domestic voters to answer to. He’s between hard times and hard times.”
Still, this delicate balance will come under scrutiny from the U.S. government, especially as major defense contracts are on the agenda during Putin’s visit to New Delhi.
Unnikrishnan said, “India needs to be careful about this, especially since no bilateral trade agreement has been reached.”
“You don’t want to inject any more stimulants into a difficult stage like today.”
