New Delhi, India – When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets any male world leader, a bear hug is almost inevitable. However, his meeting last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow provoked strong public resistance from both Washington and Kiev.
In a series of statements over several days, US officials criticized Modi’s visit to Russia, the first since Putin launched a full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022.
The US National Security Advisor warned that strong ties with Russia were a “bad bet” for India. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US is concerned about India’s relations with Russia. And Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India, warned New Delhi that it could not take its friendship with Washington “for granted”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was more direct. He referred to the deadly missile attack on Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, a day before Modi’s visit to Moscow. “It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy embrace the world’s bloodiest criminal in Moscow on such a day,” he wrote in X.
Today in Ukraine, 37 people died, three of whom were children, and 170 were injured, including 13 children, as a result of Russia’s brutal missile attack.
A Russian missile hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, targeting young cancer patients. Many were… pic.twitter.com/V1k7PEz2rJ
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 8, 2024
So, did India miscalculate the geopolitical response to Modi’s trip? Did the visit to Moscow and the public display of cordiality towards Putin harm India’s relations with the US? And why are ties with Russia important enough for India to risk after years of investment in relations with the US?
Analysts say the answer lies in a combination of history, New Delhi’s confidence in its ability to juggle multiple complex relationships and a bet that former US President Donald Trump may well return to power and soften Washington’s tough stance. Washington against Russia.
‘My friend Donald Trump’
On Saturday, after a gunman stationed on a rooftop outside a Trump rally in Pennsylvania struck the former president with a bullet, killing another person and wounding two others, a barrage of reactions erupted from around the world.
Among them was an X post from Modi, who condemned the attack, describing Trump as “my friend.” The two leaders held joint public events in Houston and the Indian city of Ahmedabad a few years ago, and a senior Indian government official told this writer that the Modi administration was increasingly convinced that Trump could return to power in November.
The former president leads current Joe Biden in the polls in several swing states and the image of Trump rising after being shot, with his fist in the air and blood running down his face, is expected to solidify his lead over Biden.
“The election for the post of US president seems like a foregone conclusion for Donald Trump and Prime Minister Modi will be happy about it,” the Indian official said.
One way Trump’s victory could help India, analysts say, is by easing pressure on New Delhi to move away from Moscow.
“A second Trump administration will almost certainly be less concerned about the optics of Russia-India ties,” said Christopher Clary, an assistant professor of political science at the University at Albany and a nonresident fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center. South Asia Program.
In his first term as president, Trump focused US strategic attention on Washington’s rivalry with Beijing rather than Moscow – a world view that is in sync with India’s. New Delhi also sees Beijing as its main threat.
A delicate balance
Admittedly, India-Russia relations have a long history of their own. A legatee of the Soviet Union, with which India maintained close relations during the Cold War, Russia maintained ties with New Delhi.
Historically, it has been the largest supplier of weapons and other defense equipment to India – from MIG and Sukhoi fighters to, more recently, the S-400 missile defense systems.
Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, India has also dramatically increased its purchase of Russian oil. Russia is now India’s largest oil supplier and these imports have caused the total volume of India-Russia trade – which was around $10 billion a year not long ago – to soar to $63 billion.
In the West, India has faced criticism for these oil purchases, which – the claim goes – help finance Russia’s war. India has rejected the criticism and argued that by buying Russian oil that the West no longer wants, it is actually helping to keep global oil prices stable.
At the same time, India has in recent years redoubled the strengthening of ties with the West, especially with the US, whose help it considers essential to ward off the perceived threat emanating from the rise of China. India’s defense dependence on Russia is decreasing as the country purchases most of its new weapons systems from North American or European manufacturers.
India has insisted that it is merely exercising its strategic autonomy. But speaking last week in the eastern Indian city or in Calcutta, Garcetti, the US ambassador, pushed back, saying “there is no strategic autonomy during a conflict,” referring to the war in Ukraine.
Modi’s visit to Russia also came a day before Zelenskyy arrived in Washington, DC to attend the NATO summit. That made Modi’s trip look bad from the perspective of the US, where Zelenskyy is treated as a hero, said Seema Sirohi, a journalist and analyst based in Washington, DC.
Has India crossed a “red line”?
The Russia trip also coincided with other sources of friction between India and the US. US prosecutors allege that an Indian government agent attempted to orchestrate the murder of Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US citizen who holds dual citizenship with Canada. In June, the Czech Republic extradited to the US the Indian man who US prosecutors say was trying to hire hitmen for the job.
In his comments in Calcutta, Garcetti referred to US concerns about the civil rights landscape in India – many rights groups have accused the Modi government of targeting critics. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has listed India as a “country of particular concern” for the past five years, alleging that New Delhi is guilty of “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom ”.
Still, analysts say India and Modi have enough cards in their hands to be able to resolve the issues in their relationship.
For all the bad optics of Modi’s visit to Russia, those familiar with the matter in the US would have been “less surprised” by the trip, Clary said. “The strategic basis for [India-US] the relationship is solid and Modi’s visit does not undermine that foundation,” he said.
Days before flying to Moscow, Modi skipped the annual summit of leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, led by China and Russia.
New Delhi is also expected to host a Quad summit later this year, said the Indian government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. China sees the Quad grouping of democracies in the Asia-Pacific, consisting of Australia, India, Japan and the US, as a challenge to its rise.
Later this year, the Russian city of Kazan will also host a summit of the BRICS group. The BRICS, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa until last year, have now expanded to include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia.
The fact that Modi returns to Russia for the second time in three months, or that he skips the meeting, may indicate how willing India is to test ties with the US, the administration official said.
For now, Sirohi said, India and the US know they need each other too much to risk upsetting their partnership.
“New Delhi and Washington will understand each other’s compulsions,” she said. “And the broader U.S.-India relationship is too important to be undermined by one obstacle.”
Or a hug.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
