K.C. Singh | Deft Global Balancing Vital As Putin Begins India Visit

Russian President Vladimir Putin begins his two-day visit to India on December 4, where he will co-chair the 23rd Russia-India Annual Summit, which was operational since 2000. Mr Putin had last visited India for the same purpose in December 2021, just months before Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022. The global diplomatic disruption caused by that attack and the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the next two summits.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia twice last year. On July 8-9 he was in Moscow for the resumed annual summit. Thereafter, he visited Kazan for the Brics summit. India was then importing discounted Russian oil, ignoring the United States’ demand to discontinue it. India calculated that the US would tolerate India-Russia engagement due to the prevalent assumption that they considered India critical to containing China.

President Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025, however, rewrote all such past assumptions. He undermined the existing international trade regimes by unilateral and arbitrary tariffs. He dispatched special envoys to resolve the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. He had often claimed that he could end the Ukraine war in hours, not weeks. When unsuccessful, he questioned US military and economic assistance to Ukraine, even suggesting Ukraine was losing the war. This defied traditional conflict resolution, which requires the arbiter to remain neutral.

In Gaza, he first fully backed Israel, even joining the Israeli air attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. Recently, he breached diplomatic limits advising the Israeli President to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under trial for corruption.

It is against this backdrop of international diplomatic and commercial disruptions that India-Russia relations must be viewed. India senses President Trump’s infatuation with his family’s interests, which he equates with American national interests. India’s outreach to Russia thus became inevitable. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Tianjin for the four-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on August 31, 2025. On display was demonstrative bonhomie between the leaders of host China, India and Russia. Prime Minister Modi sat in President Putin’s limousine for a 50-minute tete-a-tete.

Then he led President Putin by the hand to go clasp Chinese President Xi Jinping’s hands, displaying trilateral friendliness. Of course, this was political theatre rather than newfound closeness, as core territorial Sino-Indian differences persist.

The New York Times noted that “India’s risk-averse bureaucracy” would normally have avoided such “overt displays of warmth”.

This recalibration of Indian foreign and trade policies became a necessity also because of the American outreach to Russia and China. This was reflected in President Trump’s summit encounters with President Putin in Alaska, and deescalation of the American confrontation with China, after China restricted the export of critical minerals and rare earths. Sino-Russian bonhomie also raised Indian concerns, especially the phrase “no limits” partnership used in 2022, days before Russia attacked Ukraine. Indians faced a new reality.

Further came President Trump’s social media post, before he met President Xi on October 30, 2025 in Busan, South Korea, dubbing it a “G-2” summit. China has been avidly seeking this bipolarity, positioning it as America’s only rival. Even Russia would have resented China usurping its position as the main global American rival since the Cold War.

This places India and Russia amongst multiple major nations, some economically powerful but militarily lagging, favouring a multipolar and not a neo-bipolar world. The spokesperson of India’s Ministry of External Affairs described the India-Russia summit as further strengthening the “special and privileged strategic partnership”.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin too echoed the same phrase. Thus, Indian and Russian interests converging is hardly surprising, especially after the extra 25 per cent punitive US tariffs on India for importing Russian oil. India has gradually diminished these oil imports, perhaps tactically, to help finalise the India-US trade deal.

Besides oil, India’s dependence on Russian military equipment had also diminished. In the past decade, India’s import of US defence equipment touched $30 billion. But President Trump’s mercurial behaviour casts a shadow on future purchases, especially of fighter jets, missiles, etc. Also, his pampering of Pakistan’s military leadership and resumption of weapons sales to Pakistan enhance India’s reservations. The last straw has been his relentless desire to mediate between India and Pakistan, especially his endorsement of the Pakistani version of India’s Operation Sindoor.

Defence deals may not be signed during President Putin’s visit, but procurement or development of high-technology military equipment will inevitably figure. India has been concerned over delayed deliveries of past orders. India is seeking five S-400 air defence systems, two ordered in 2018. The Russian defence industry’s preoccupation with the Ukraine war is perhaps the culprit. India is also examining the purchase of SU-57 fighters, a generation ahead of the French Rafale fighters.

Russia in the past, has more willingly shared technology than Western defence firms. Despite the Indian government dodging questions about Pakistan downing Indian Air Force fighters, an internal assessment about the performance of existing air assets is inevitable. The Ukraine war has also altered war-fighting, with unmanned air assets dominating. Undoubtedly, the outstanding performance of the BrahMos missiles, a joint Indo-Russian product, during Operation Sindoor demonstrated the advantages of time-tested defence collaboration with Russia.

India-Russia trade now totals $65-67 billion annually, which mainly consists of Russian oil imports. Consequently, India faces a trade imbalance. The product base needs widening, to lift the two-way trade to $100 billion by 2030. This may not work until the Russian economy is freed from the Ukraine war’s burden. But once the Western sanctions are lifted, Russia also tends to turn towards Europe for products. China, meanwhile, has used the war period to capture more of the Russian market.

However, Russia is not about to revert to the Cold War period’s informal alliance with India, symbolised by the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation, dated August 9, 1971. That was crucial to stymieing the US during the subsequent India-Pakistan war. Three days before arriving in India, President Putin announced visa-free entry for Chinese nationals till the end of 2026. In geopolitics, coincidences are rare. Russia is signalling to China that any revived warmth in India-Russia relations shall not be at the cost of Sino-Russian relations. Russia also realises that likewise India is not about to abandon trying to stabilise relations with the United States and may even try to expand them.

Indian foreign policy is therefore re-entering a phase, like during the Cold War, when non-alignment dominated, which requires deft balancing between multiple rival camps, most of whom are competing and engaging simultaneously.