(Al Jazeera Media Network) Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting India today (Thursday) for the first time since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, even as a renewed push by the United States to end the conflict appears to have stalled.
Putin’s 30-hour speed trip coincides with a tense turn in relations between Washington and New Delhi, with the US also punishing India with tariffs and a sanctions threat for its strong historic ties with Russia and a surge in its purchase of Russian crude during the Ukraine war.
That tension has, in turn, made India’s longstanding balancing act between Russia and the West an even more delicate tightrope walk.
Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, India has tried to avoid getting locked into formal alliances with any superpower, leading the non-aligned movement during the Cold War, even though in reality it drifted closer to the Soviet Union from the 1960s. Since the end of the Cold War, it has deepened strategic and military ties with the US while trying to keep its friendship with Russia afloat.
Yet, Russia’s war on Ukraine has challenged that balance – and Putin’s visit could offer signs of how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to juggle New Delhi’s competing relationships without sacrificing any of them.
Putin is expected to land on Thursday evening and head for a private dinner with Modi at the prime minister’s residence in the heart of the Indian capital, New Delhi.
On the morning of Friday, December 5, Putin is scheduled to visit Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, for a guard of honour and a meeting with India’s ceremonial head of state, Droupadi Murmu. He will then, like all visiting leaders, travel to Raj Ghat, the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi.
Then, Putin and Modi will meet at Hyderabad House, a complex that hosts most leadership summits for the latest chapter of an annual India-Russia summit. After that, they are scheduled to meet business leaders, before attending a banquet thrown in Putin’s honour by Murmu, the Indian president.
Earlier, the Kremlin said in a statement that Putin’s visit to India was “of great importance, providing an opportunity to comprehensively discuss the extensive agenda of Russian-Indian relations as a particularly privileged strategic partnership.”
Putin will be joined by Andrei Belousov, his defence minister, and a wide-ranging delegation from business and industry, including top executives of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, and reportedly the heads of sanctioned oil firms Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.
The visit comes as India and Russia mark 25 years of a strategic partnership that began in Putin’s first year in office as his country’s head of state.
But even though India and Russia like to portray their relationship as an example of a friendship that has remained steady amid shifting geopolitical currents, their ties haven’t been immune to pressures from other nations.
Since 2000, New Delhi and Moscow have had in place a system of annual summits: the Indian prime minister would visit Russia one year, and the Russian president would pay a return visit to India the following year.
That tradition, however, was broken in 2022, the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Modi was supposed to visit Russia for the summit, but the conclave was put off.
In 2023, Putin skipped a visit to India for the G20 summit in New Delhi. At the time, Putin was rarely travelling abroad, largely because of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against him related to the Ukraine war. India is not a member of the ICC – and so it would have been safe for Putin to attend, but Western members of the G20 made it clear that their leaders would be uncomfortable sharing the room with the Russian president.
Finally, in 2024, the annual summit resumed, with Modi visiting Russia. And now, Putin will land in New Delhi after four years.
Trade analysts and political experts expect Putin to push for India to buy more Russian missile systems and fighter jets, in a bid to boost defence ties and explore more areas to expand trade, including pharmaceuticals, machinery and agricultural products.
