Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin is under the spotlight of Western allies.
It is Modi’s first trip abroad after being reelected in June, and this trip comes only hours after Russian missile strikes left 41 dead across Ukraine, including at a Kyiv children’s hospital.
The pictures of Modi embracing Putin, and even a video in which Putin said of Modi, “my dearest friend,” is how it has been reported in New Delhi, have been splashed across India. It was Modi’s first visit to the Kremlin since 2019, and it coincides with a NATO summit being hosted in Washington to discuss the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
India maintains good relations with both Russia and the US. The US worriedly noted that Modi’s visit was rather untimely and thus urged him to make a point over the issue of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Any resolution of conflict must certainly uphold the charter of the UN and sovereignty of Ukraine, mentioned Matthew Miller, a spokesman from the State Department.
Zelensky criticized the visit of Modi, which, according to him, was a”devastating blow” to peace efforts. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky went further to say,
“It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter) late on Monday.
The backdrop to the summit for the NATO 75th anniversary is painted with a larger canvas of opposition from the West to Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. India has called for dialogue and diplomacy without actually condemning Russia.
India calls for diplomacy at a time when the West starts to put sanctions on and isolate Moscow, even as Putin reaches out for closer ties with China, India, and Turkey. India and Russia share a long-standing strategic partnership since the Cold War. Russia is also one of the significant suppliers of weaponry to India. The visit by Modi is part of an effort to tackle trade imbalances and provide further incentives for Russian investment in India. Another offshoot, or a direct consequence, of the sanctions has been that India’s dependence on oil from Russia has increased manifold to the extent of bilateral trade between them totaling $65 billion.
India’s approach is to balance its relationship with both the US and Russia in order to rein in China, the regional nemesis. The visit by Modi is a reassertion of India’s policy of strategic autonomy and the ability of the country to tread in the very high-stakes world of geopolitics, safeguarding important relationships both with the U.S. and Russia.
