India-Russia ties

India’s history with Russia is key to understanding its stance on the Ukraine war.

Text Charu Kartikeya, DW editor, DW Hindi Service

India’s stance on the Ukraine war has left the West baffled and frustrated. While India has repeatedly denounced war and called for cessation of hostilities, it has not called out Russia’s aggression. At the United Nations, India has abstained from one resolution after another aimed at censuring and isolating Russia for the invasion.

The West has tried to nudge, coax, express despondency with and even scare India, but it hasn’t succeeded in getting the latter to change its view. In fact, and as an indication of Europe’s desperation, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederikson even appealed to India to try to influence Russia to end the war during India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to her country in May. But India has been steadfast in its refusal to make any changes to its position.

India’s ties with Russia

Why has an aspiring superpower risked international opprobrium over appearing to be on the side of an aggressor country in the wake of war? After all, even Europe has been able to rise beyond its crippling dependence on Russia for gas to take a stand on the war, condemn Russia’s actions and even impose sanctions on the latter. If Europe can do it, why can’t India? The answer to that question lies as much in India’s history as in its geography.

It is not for nothing that India keeps abstaining from UN resolutions aimed at censuring Russia.

During the Cold War era, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru got together with the then President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito, Egypt’s second President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesia’s first President Sukarno to create a group of nations that refused to join either the Western or the Eastern bloc.However, India faced a peculiar problem that was to become a permanent challenge for its foreign policy. To its north and west lie India’s two difficult neighbors, China and Pakistan, with whom the country has such acrimonious border disputes that have led to five full fledged wars in total and several near-war situations.

Things became more difficult for India when the US started its efforts to establish Pakistan as its major ally in South Asia and started providing it military aid. With two hostile neighbors always ready to breathe down its neck, India needed a bigger partner and so, it turned to Russia.

Close defense ties

This was the beginning of a close bilateral relationship that was to eventually stretch from areas like politics and defense to trade, civil nuclear energy and even space. The Soviet Union started supplying several weapons systems to India in the 1970s and remained India’s largest defense importer for decades.

After the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991, its inheritor, Russia, continued this legacy. Some estimates suggest at least 65 percent of India’s defense needs are met by Russia alone. The Stockholm-based defense think tank SIPRI estimates that as of 2021, Russian weapons still constitute a lion’s share (46 percent) of India’s total defense imports.

As recently as 2018, India ignored the risk of US sanctions for purchasing a heavy missile defense system from Russia in a multi-billion dollar deal. Now, the bilateral defense relationship is not only limited to the importation of weapons, but it also includes joint research and development, training and military exercises.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, escorts Russian President Vladimir Putin, on arrival for a bilateral meeting at Hyderabad House,December 6, 2021 in New Delhi, India.

Political support

During the 1962 Sino-India war, the Soviet Union stayed neutral in spite of China’s objection. In 1965, when Pakistan attacked India, the Soviet Union served as a successful peace broker between the two sides.

In 1971, when India helped East Pakistan in seceding from West Pakistan, leading to the creation of an independent Bangladesh, the Soviet navy sent nuclear submarines to help India counter the threat posed by US and British warships in the Bay of Bengal.

As recently as 2020, a bloody skirmish between Indian and Chinese soldiers led the countries to the brink of yet another war. Both sides deployed troops and military equipment in large numbers on the border, and it took months before de-escalation started.

Though neither New Delhi nor Beijing have admitted that Moscow brokered peace between the two hostile neighbours, it is a fact that at the height of this stand-off, Moscow hosted a string of multilateral summits in which top political leaders of India and China, including the defence and foreign ministers, met and sat for talks.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (C), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and Indian External Affairs MinisterSushma Swaraj hold the 16th meeting of the foreign ministers of China,Russia and India in Wuzhen of east China’s Zhejiang Province, February27, 2019.

It is not for nothing that India keeps abstaining from UN resolutions aimed at censuring Russia. Since the 1950s, Russia has used its veto powers in the UNSC on multiple occasions to consistently block resolutions against India. Russia also supports India’s claim for permanent membership of the UNSC.

In international politics, no relationship is cast in stone and with the changing global order, the India-Russia relationship is also changing. India’s defence imports from Russia are going down and the country is gradually finding a place in Western clubs, like the Quad, too.

However, India has clearly enunciated its position in the Ukraine war and has demonstrated, so far, that it will not condemn Russia’s aggression only because the West wants it to. Given that nobody knows when the war will end, it is anyone’s guess how long India might continue its tightrope walk between Russia and the West.