Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to visit Russia in 2024 for the annual summit, a practice that got interrupted by Covid-19 and the Ukraine conflict. The annual summits have been a feature of India-Russia ties since the year 2000 when Putin assumed power.
If in 2024, too, the practice of annual summits had not been resumed, it would have sent a political signal that the two countries were indeed drifting apart. It would have given rise to speculation that India might be yielding to Western pressure to reduce the visibility of its ties with Russia at the highest level, or that India was conveying its own concerns about the strengthening of Russia-China strategic ties which had cast doubt in its mind on Russia’s reliability as a special and privileged strategic partner, now that after the Galwan episode India’s ties with China have foundered, with the armed forces of the two countries confronting each other on the border in Ladakh. The question has arisen whether Russia’s growing dependence on China would leave it open to pressure from the latter to withhold arms supplies and spares to India in the event of a wider India-China conflict in the future.
Some commentators in India have argued that Russia is a declining power with an uncertain future and that India should therefore strengthen its ties with the West where its true interests lie in terms of economic growth, foreign investment, access to advanced technologies, defence modernisation, democracy links, educational opportunities, diasporic connections, and so on. In this view, India should give up fence-sitting and choose sides more openly. Our media and think tanks generally promote this thinking. Our business community, which is obviously much more linked to the West than to Russia, is not active enough in promoting stronger economic ties with Russia.
The reality is that Russia is important to us bilaterally, regionally and internationally. It has stood by us since the mid-1950s when we were under great pressure by the West politically and economically, and indeed, strategically. It provided us with real defence muscle, participated in laying the foundations of our heavy industry, and engaged in space and nuclear cooperation with us. Russia has shared sensitive technologies with us, unlike the West which has imposed technology denial sanctions on us for decades. Russia has never sanctioned us, unlike the Western countries. Russia is the only country which is collaborating with us currently in setting up nuclear power plants. Expanding our nuclear power sector is becoming more pressing in light of climate change issues. Cooperation in the area of nuclear modular reactors could well be considered.
Russia, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, remains the world’s biggest country, with enormous natural resources, self-sufficient in hydrocarbons and food, a formidable nuclear power with powerful delivery systems, a permanent member of the Security Council, with a great tradition of diplomacy, and so on. How many countries in the world have such assets? Should we distance ourselves from such a country? What is our gain in doing that? Russia may have been weakened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it still is a formidable international player. As part of broadening the base of our diplomacy to increase our global profile and influence, we are reaching out to a whole host of countries which individually do not play any significant international role, do not possess an array of resources, are not a source of technologies or major investments. What would be the logic then to draw away from Russia?
It is wrong to describe our ties with Russia as “legacy” ties. The sense in which this word is used is equivocal. In reality, these ties continue to serve our interests in many important ways. Russia remains our biggest defence partner even as we diversify. (In fact, even in Soviet times, we procured major defence items from the West, excluding the US, and so diversity in defence supplies is not a new policy). With the end of the Cold War, geopolitical changes, a major reversal of US policies on India, the emergence of Israel as a defence partner, French readiness to engage us in sensitive defence cooperation, many platforms or niche technologies that Russia cannot supply, diversification has been a pragmatic process. In any case, over-dependence in any context is not a good option. PM Modi’s Moscow visit will be an occasion to take stock of our existing and future defence cooperation in the context of Russia’s preoccupation with the proxy war in Ukraine.
Lack of contiguity, inadequate connectivity, transportation handicaps, lack of knowledge of each other’s markets and even relative lack of interest, institutional handicaps, and the Westward orientation of Russian business until now explain why trade between the two countries has been limited. Today, with Russia under financial sanctions, and its trade ties with the West largely collapsing, including oil and gas trade, Russia has turned eastwards, towards China in a major way but also towards India.
Russia has now become the biggest supplier of oil to India and its fertiliser exports to India have grown manifold. Indian exports to Russia have also registered some increase. These positive gains have to be consolidated. Payment issues have to be addressed because of the West’s financial sanctions. Connectivity has to be improved with a fuller operation of the International North-South Transport Corridor. These issues will obviously be on the agenda of Putin-Modi talks.
In the regional context, India and Russia have reason to coordinate thinking and approaches to Afghanistan under the Taliban. Russia is opening up more to the Taliban than India. As part of consolidating countries in this region, including Pakistan, in formats that would weaken US influence, Russia’s approach may not be identical to ours, especially with regard to Pakistan. In a broader geopolitical context, India and Russia need to harmonise thinking on BRICS expansion. Too large an expansion may give the impression of fostering multipolarity but it can risk making the grouping ineffectual.
India and Russia support multipolarity, but Russia’s objectives are more directly anti-US than those of India. Russia is locked in a very major confrontation with the US, whereas India’s ties with the US have greatly improved. But India too wants a dilution of the West’s hegemony, as without it the reform of international institutions and India and other non-Western powers playing a greater role in global governance will not be possible.
India also has to manage the Russia-India-China triangle which is now tilted against India with the phenomenal increase in China’s power, especially economic, and the Russia-China so-called “no limits” partnership. This partnership is not directed at India but India has to take cognisance of it. Russia, in a bow to China, is against the Indo-Pacific concept and the Quad, which it sees as bloc politics pursued by the US. India, with China’s territorial expansionism and its policies in our neighbourhood in mind, calls Quad a public good and is invested in the Indo-Pacific concept. These different perceptions of India and Russia are part of the geopolitical conflicts and power shifts that are occurring and are not fundamental to their ties.
If India would have a need for strategic room vis-à-vis the US in preserving its traditional ties with Russia, the same consideration would give it similar room vis-à-vis China too. One can assume that Russia would also not want to become over-dependent on China, it would be concerned about China’s ambitions to form a G2 with the US at some stage, and in this context, Russia would need India as the biggest Asian power after China and one that is on a growth path as a balancing partner.
Kanwal Sibal is a former Indian Foreign Secretary. He was India’s Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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