Modi travels to Moscow for first time since Ukraine war

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in his first visit to Moscow since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022 and discuss the gamut of bilateral ties — including defense, energy and trade — as well as key regional and global issues.

In his departure statement ahead of flying to Moscow, Modi said the “special and privileged strategic partnership” between India and Russia has advanced over the past decade, including in the areas of energy, security, trade, investment, health, education, culture, tourism and people-to-people exchanges.

“I look forward to reviewing all aspects of bilateral cooperation with my friend President Vladimir Putin and sharing perspectives on various regional and global issues,” he said in the statement, shared by the Indian government. “We seek to play a supportive role for a peaceful and stable region.”

Modi’s two-day visit from Monday comes at the invitation of Putin to revive an annual summit between the two countries, the last of which was held when the Russian leader visited New Delhi in December 2021. The two are scheduled to hold a meeting on Tuesday, preceded by a private dinner on Monday.

This is also Modi’s first bilateral visit since he assumed office for a third straight term last month and signifies the importance New Delhi attaches to its long-standing ties with Moscow amid Russia’s growing closeness with China.

Their last meeting was in Uzbekistan on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in September 2022, when Modi told Putin to his face that “today’s era is not an era of war.” Modi skipped the SCO summit this year in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, where New Delhi was represented by External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

India has not explicitly condemned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but has often called for resolving the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy. It also has continued to do brisk business with Moscow, including the purchase of discounted Russian oil.

The Modi-Putin talks “will focus on the future development of the traditionally friendly relations between Russia and India, as well as the topical issues on the international and regional agendas,” the Kremlin said on Thursday.

Observers point out that Modi’s third term has begun amid an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment.

“‘Frozen conflicts’ like Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas have erupted again, with no endgame in sight in near future,” Raj Kumar Sharma, a senior research fellow at NatStrat, an independent think tank working on India’s national security and foreign policy, told Nikkei Asia.

Modi’s Russia visit also comes at a time when India’s relations with the U.S. are relatively steady but those with Beijing remain on a downward trajectory due to border tensions since 2020.

Meanwhile, the Sino-Russian strategic embrace in the wake of Western sanctions against Moscow seems to be intensifying, he added. Putin said that ties between Moscow and Beijing were “experiencing the best period in their history,” during a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at SCO summit last week.

“In this geopolitical scenario, Prime Minister Modi has rightly decided to visit Russia, highlighting the resilience of India-Russia ties,” Sharma said. He observed that many in the Indian strategic community have been questioning Moscow’s growing proximity with China and that there are doubts raised by Russian experts on India’s strategic alignment with the U.S.

“However, there is less attention paid to the fact that neither India wants to have an alliance with the U.S. nor Russia wants one with China,” he said. “They may be aligned, but want to maintain their strategic autonomy and independence of action.”

According to Prerna Gandhi, an associate fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a New Delhi-based security think tank, most experts fail to spot that Russia’s increasing coziness with China will only lead to it also getting closer to India. “India remains one of the few ways [for Russia] to diversify from [a] breakdown of relations with the West and survive the Chinese embrace.”

Despite a Western media narrative of Moscow being isolated, Gandhi added, the recent spate of Putin’s summit meetings, including the SCO conference in Astana, indicate no decline in Russian prestige. “In today’s heavily contested world order, there needs to be a serious examination as to why the [so-called] Global South … has not forsaken Russia. That will determine the contours of the new international system that replaces the post-Cold War order.”

The Ukraine conflict is likely to figure prominently in the Modi-Putin summit, during which New Delhi is also expected to convey its concerns over the recruitment of some Indians in the Russian army. The summit follows Modi’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit last month in Italy.

“India may not be working overtime to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, [but its] nuanced position on the matter and constant contact with Russian and Ukrainian leadership do not rule out India’s potential role in this regard in the near future,” Sharma said.

Apart from geopolitics, the summit will focus on Russia-India trade, which stood at an all-time high of $65.7 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March, up 33% from the previous year.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said on Friday that trade has seen “a sharp increase” in the last year, “primarily due to strong energy cooperation.” But Indian exports to Russia stood at only $4 billion and so trade remained imbalanced, “which is a matter of priority in our discussions with the Russian side.”

“Our effort will be to increase exports from India to Russia in every sector, whether it’s agriculture, industry, pharmaceuticals or services, as quickly as possible, which will help correct the trade imbalance between the two countries,” he added.

“By this year-end, India and Russia are likely to implement mutual visa-free travel that would give a boost to tourism and people-to-people connectivity,” Sharma of NatStrat said. “India is [also] likely to announce [the] opening of two more consulates in Russia during Prime Minister Modi’s visit, an indication that economic and cultural ties will receive substantial importance by both sides in the future.”

The two countries are also expected to sign the long-delayed Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics Agreement, which would further deepen their naval cooperation by enabling their forces to access logistic and support facilities at each other’s bases and ports, he said, pointing out that New Delhi has similar agreements with its Quad partners — the U.S., Japan and Australia — apart from other strategic allies such as France, Singapore and South Korea. “India has been ensuring a ‘political parity’ in its ties with Quad countries and Russia.”

Gandhi of VIF observed that this summit has very important optical value beyond the substance. “With elections in both Russia and India this year indicating continuity of the Putin and Modi administrations, a meeting this early in the new terms for both leaders reinforces not only their personal bond but the bilateral relationship between the two countries.”

source : asia.nikkei