New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is skipping the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in Kazakhstan, is likely to travel to Moscow next month for his first foreign bilateral visit in his third term in office.
The visit has been tentatively scheduled for the second week of July, around July 8.
If this pans out, it will be a major break from past convention during his last two terms, when the neighbourhood had been the focus of his first foreign trips after elections.
In 2014, Modi chose Bhutan for his first bilateral foreign foray, followed by the Maldives and Sri Lanka in 2019.
The Indian government has not yet confirmed the visit but the Russian government was quick to do so.
“I can confirm that the Indian premier’s visit is in the pipeline … We are making active preparations for it. This visit will take place,” Yuri Ushakov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide, told media personnel in Moscow on Tuesday (June 25) as reported by the Tass news agency.
The visit appears to have been confirmed very recently, as the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has not yet dispatched an advance team to Moscow to handle security and protocol arrangements.
Modi has visited Russia five times in the past decade, but he has not made a bilateral trip to Moscow since 2019.
Even considering the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a lengthy gap, particularly since India and Russia agreed to hold annual summits after their relationship was upgraded to a strategic partnership in 2000.
His first trip to Moscow was in June 2015 for the BRICS summit and his last one was for the annual summit at Vladivostok in September 2019.
The Indian PM will join the list of world leaders who have visited Russia during the ongoing Ukraine war, which includes leaders from China, Hungary, Turkey, Myanmar, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, as well as various other African and Central Asian countries.
India has not publicly criticised Russia for invading Ukraine in February 2022, but has broadly called for a peaceful resolution and the protection of civilians in disputes.
Modi did not attend the global peace summit on the Ukraine war in Switzerland and was represented by a senior MEA official.
India distanced itself from the joint statement issued after the summit, insisting that both parties to the conflict – Russia and Ukraine – must be at the table.
Russia was not invited to the summit.
The Ukraine war led to a significant increase in India-Russia trade, which had previously been sluggish. Over the past two years, trade between the two countries nearly tripled to $65.7 billion. This surge is primarily due to India purchasing large quantities of Russian crude oil, which was sanctioned by the West following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to government data, India’s crude imports from Russia were $2 billion in 2022 and rose to $46.49 billion in 2024.
Consequently, India’s trade deficit with Russia soared to $57 billion in 2023-24.
The results of the general elections that were declared on June 4 meant that Modi returned to power for a third term, but with a diminished mandate. While the ruling alliance won a majority in the Lok Sabha, Modi’s party lost over 60 seats.
Within a week after his inauguration, Modi travelled to Italy for the G7 summit to participate in an outreach session with major nations from the Global South.
However, the Indian government recently notified the host of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kazakhstan, set for July 3-4 in Astana, that Modi’s planned visit was no longer feasible.
India has not officially announced the cancellation, as Modi’s trip to Astana was never publicly disclosed. However, the MEA’s readout of the Indian PM’s phone call with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Tuesday conspicuously omits any reference to a physical meeting for the summit in the near future, despite Modi wishing for its “success”.
The last-minute cancellation was especially significant as Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping plan to participate in the summit.
Although India has mitigated its absence by arranging a bilateral visit to Moscow, it is evident that there is no urgent rush for a Modi-Xi encounter.
