As India Prepares to Welcome Putin, Its Juggling Act With Russia and the US Continues

As India confronts President Donald Trump’s high tariffs and prepares to welcome President Vladimir Putin in New Delhi on December 4 and 5, three imperatives stand out.

First, India has to do what it takes to preserve its strategic autonomy – which implies that it must maximise its diplomatic and political options, just like any country, aligned or nonaligned.

Never mind the old rhetoric about tried and tested friendship with Russia, or the more recent talk about India-America trust and mutual respect.

Realpolitik defines India’s relationships with both countries. Since the Cold War, the mutual understanding between India and America, the world’s two largest democracies, has run parallel to ups and downs in United States-India bilateral relations.

Second, India gets much more from the United States on the economic/trade front than it does from Russia. As the buyer of 18% of India’s exports, the US is its largest market. Russia purchases a mere 1.1% of India’s exports.

Third, Russia has certainly supplied India with more arms than the US. Over the past two decades, Russia provided India with more than 65% of its weapons for $60 billion. New Delhi bought $ 20 billion worth of American arms during the same period.

In 2018, New Delhi spent $ 5.43 billion on the S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile alone, although Moscow first sold it to India’s Asian arch-rival, China, in 2014.

So, the signing of an Indo-US defence pact on October 31 and news on November 20, about a $93 million military deal for weapons New Delhi will get from Washington to enhance regional security and strengthen India-United States military ties should be kept in perspective.

Trump has pressed India to buy more American military equipment, perhaps to reduce the US trade deficit with India. Talks between Washington and New Delhi on arms sales were halted last August, after Trump penalised India with 50% tariffs, in part for buying Russian oil.

In an ongoing show of strategic autonomy, India is dealing with its Russian and American partners simultaneously. New Delhi has highlighted as “a historic first” its agreement with Washington that India will start buying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from America.

It is hard to say whether India will continue to import Russian crude and, if so, how much. Those imports rose by 11% in October, defying Trumps assertion that India “had agreed” to stop buying Russian oil “within a short period of time”.

That period of time may not be over. As Trump’s sanctions on Russia’s oil buyers closed in on November 21, India’s major oil refining companies announced that they would stop purchasing it. Until then, India continued to buy Russian crude. Indian oil refineries, one of them in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, exported refined oil to Europe and the United States and made millions. Facing Trump’s threats they shunned state-owned oil companies like Rosneft and Lukoil. Then, with Moscow increasing its discounts, Indian oil refining companies tried to buy Russian oil from unsanctioned suppliers.

However, loadings headed for India from Russia fell by 47% in November. The chances are that Russian oil for India’s exporting refineries will drop further in December-January.

Meanwhile, India is far from finished with Trump’s high tariffs on its exports to the United States. The tariffs – which took effect in August and are among the highest in the world – include a 25 penalty for transactions with Russia. They could shave 0.8% off India’s GDP growth this year.

If the trend continues, India’s hopes of becoming a developed economy by 2047, the centenary of its independence, would be dashed.

Contrary to New Delhi’s claims, India was not always buying Russian oil because it was the cheapest. It often paid higher prices for it than the $ 60 price cap set by the G-7 in US dollars, UAE dirham and even Chinese yuan.

New Delhi is decidedly indignant that Trump has negotiated a one-year trade truce with China, which has bought far more Russian oil than India. That was because he realised that heavy tariffs on China were unsustainable: Beijing crafted a strategy aimed at controlling the global industries that depended on Chinese inputs. Those included clean energy and car manufacturing. Without naming the United States, India has upbraided what it sees as Washington’s “double standards”.

On another plane, Russia’s war in Ukraine has spurred India’s attempts to diversify its weapons base. India’s military have pointed out that deliveries of Russian arms have stalled since Moscow’s invasion started in 2022. Moscow has delivered only two of the five S-400 air defence systems ordered by India since 2018. That has put pressure on India to diversify sources of arms buys, from France, Germany, Spain and Israel.

The trade front

Differences between Washington and New Delhi on trade remain, although Trump has predicted that a trade truce is on the cards

This does not mean that he has accepted India’s red lines on America’s agricultural exports to India. New Delhi has drawn those lines because a large share of India’s population commands the farming sector. But Modi’s preaching to farmers to think beyond flour and rice reveals the extent to which India has clearly come under pressure. The long-term question is what India and America can do to reduce their competing commercial priorities and strengthen their trade ties.

Outlook: Russia, America, China and India

This raises the important question: Are US-India relations on firm ground?

More American arms sales to India could help. That in turn could hinge on how Trump envisions India’s contribution to the defence of the Indo-Pacific, since it is economically the weakest member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, (Quad), revived by Trump 1.0 in 2017, and the only nonaligned one. Compared to China’s, its progress has been slow – and even slower compared to that of its democratic partners in the Quad – the US, Japan and Australia – which are among the world’s richest countries and have the capacity to counter China technologically.

Eventually, the quantity of America’s defence sales to India, and defence-industrial cooperation between the two countries will determine the depth and strength of military cooperation.

On the other hand, arms, oil and trade problems with Trump have not pushed India closer to Russia and China, although Modi attended the Chinese-led summit of the Shanghai-led Cooperation Organisation at Tianjin from August 31 to September 1 to show that India has good relations with other powers. For, China’s old claims to Indian territory remain an obstacle to strengthening ties. It is also India’s top source of imports, and has a huge trade surplus of $ 99.2 billion with India. China is also Russia’s most valued strategic and economic partner because its offerings are much larger than those of India.

India will continue to perform a difficult juggling act with the United States on one side and Russia on the other. Putin’s trip to India will reveal how difficult this will be. More S-400 missiles, more military aircraft, like the fifth-generation Su-57 stealth fighters and more discounted oil are likely.

But not much more, even as India hails its relationship with Russia as a contributor to global stability.

Nevertheless, as the world’s largest economy, militarily and economically, the US can and should offer India a lot more than it does. Both countries have much to gain from stronger ties with each other.

Anita Inder Singh is a founding professor of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi. She has been a Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington D.C. and has taught international relations at the graduate level at Oxford and the LSE.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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