The greetings couldn’t have been warmer, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrapping Vladimir Putin in a hug as soon as the Russian president stepped onto the tarmac in New Delhi Thursday evening for his first visit to India in four years.
Both leaders jumped into the same vehicle for a heart-to-heart as they headed to an informal dinner ahead of official talks Friday at a politically tense time for India, amid strained ties between New Delhi and Washington over tariffs.
The rare airport welcome from Modi was seen by observers as a way to underline the close ties between the two leaders and to highlight the unique and longstanding India-Russia relationship dating back to the Cold War.
Talks on Friday led to a string of agreements for deeper co-operation on trade, defence and energy, as the warmth and praise on both sides continued.
Modi took pains to thank Putin for his “deep friendship with India” and “unwavering commitment,” while Russia’s president lauded their “special partnership” and regular phone calls.
“The India-Russia friendship has remained steady like a guiding star,” Modi said in his statement wrapping up the talks.
The summit, while tackling a trade imbalance and pushing to deepen defence ties, was also steeped in symbolism.
For Putin, the optics were simple: the visit served to show that Russia is not that isolated nor is the country a global pariah despite heavy sanctions and an arrest warrant for him from the International Criminal Court.
India’s path was slightly more complicated, with Modi walking a tightrope between honouring deeply entrenched ties with Russia, the country’s biggest defence supplier, while also taking pains not to further anger the United States.
‘The Trump problem’
“Protecting the India-America relationship from the Trump problem is very important,” said Dilip Sinha, a retired Indian diplomat and commentator, referring to the unpredictability of U.S. President Donald Trump.
But, he added, in terms of air defence systems and other sharing of expertise, “the co-operation from Russia is far more useful than the West has ever offered to us.”
In August, the Trump administration slapped Indian imports with extra tariffs, which now sit at 50 per cent. They were a punishment, the administration said, for the South Asian country’s purchases of discounted Russian crude oil, which the U.S. claims are helping fund the war in Ukraine.
The steep tariffs, along with Trump’s insistence that he brokered a ceasefire between India and rival Pakistan during a four-day skirmish in May, have put a chill on India-U.S. ties, even as talks to broker a trade deal flounder.
New Delhi has called the punitive tariffs unreasonable and unjustified, and the bullish attitude from the Americans, along with statements from some in the Trump administration, have provoked anger across India.
The attempt from the U.S. to pressure New Delhi into scaling back its ties to Russia was alluded to on Friday when Putin made it clear after the summit that his country was ready to continue “ensuring the uninterrupted supply of fuel for the rapidly growing Indian economy.”
‘Resilient to external pressure’
Modi, however, did not directly mention oil purchases in his statement, only referring more broadly to “energy security.”
Both leaders, in their joint statement, said “Russian-Indian ties remain resilient to external pressure.”
But Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri was cautious about Putin’s offer to provide the uninterrupted energy supply when asked about it in a media briefing following the summit, saying Indian energy companies decide on purchases based on “evolving market dynamics” and “commercial issues.”
For former diplomat Sinha, that caution from New Delhi makes perfect sense.
“The U.S. is a much bigger market for India than Russia can ever dream of becoming” despite longstanding India-Russia ties, he said.
“We have to ensure that we do nothing with Russia that will give Trump another excuse to put blame on India,” Sinha said.
“That has to be at the back of our mind.”
Looking for deeper ties
Still, even though Russia can’t replace the United States as a vital trade partner for India, deepening ties is a smart move, he said.
Both countries are looking for alternative markets to help their economies. India wants to be more self-reliant in terms of military production, and Friday’s joint statement promised to reshape defence ties to take that into account.
Russia remains India’s biggest supplier of weapons, even though the proportion is down to 36 per cent from a previous high of more than 70, with recent moves from Delhi to diversify its supply.
Sinha said the India-Russia relationship is in a special category because of the history the countries share and that it will continue, even with its own set of issues, such as a large trade imbalance in Russia’s favour.
As part of the summit, the two countries inked an economic co-operation program that will aim to expand bilateral trade to $100 billion US by 2030.
The other factor affecting the behaviour at the summit is China, with both Russia and India tiptoeing around the increasingly powerful country.
China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the Chinese port city of Tianjin.
“India is also aware of how close Russia and China have become in the last few years” and would like to prevent those ties from deepening further at New Delhi’s expense, said Harsh Pant, vice-president of foreign policy at the Observer Research Foundation, a Delhi-based think-tank.
A cosy relationship between Putin and Modi also serves the prime minister domestically, where “there’s a sense of warmth about Russia” and its historical ties to India, added Pant, who is also a professor at King’s College London.
The visit sends “a message to [Modi’s] own constituents at home that he’s not one to buckle under pressure from the U.S.,” Pant said.
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