India-Russia ties under scrutiny as Moscow moves closer to China

India’s relationship with Russia stays steadfast as either side seek to deepen their economic ties. But Moscow has also grown near Beijing since invading Ukraine, and that raises critical national security concerns for Recent Delhi.

Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar recently said the country was able to restart free trade negotiations with Russia.

“Our partnership today is a subject of attention and comment, not since it has modified, but since it has not,” he said, describing the connection as “among the many steadiest” on the earth.

Russia also desires to “intensify” free trade discussions with India, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said during a visit to Delhi. Manturov can be Moscow’s trade minister.

Despite the display of economic cooperation, India’s leaders are “rigorously watching” as Russia becomes more isolated and moves closer to “China’s corner,” said Harsh V. Pant, vp for studies and foreign policy at Observer Research Foundation, a Recent Delhi-based think tank.

Russia’s “weak and vulnerable position” and growing reliance on China for economic and strategic reasons, will certainly be worrying for India, he told CNBC.

It’s becoming “tougher with every passing day due to closeness that we’re witnessing between Beijing and Moscow,” Pant noted. “The pressure on India is increasing, it definitely wouldn’t prefer to see that occur.”

Recent Delhi will try as much as possible to avoid a possible “Russia-China alliance or axis,” Pant added. “As that may have far reaching consequences and can fundamentally alter India’s foreign policy and strategic calculation.”

There are national interest reasons “why India continues to purchase low-cost Russian oil and trade with them, this FTA is a component of that,” said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs in Recent Delhi.

However it appears “this relationship is happening from being a really high-value strategic partnership to a transactional one,” he noted, adding Moscow’s “tighter embrace of China” doesn’t bode well for India’s national security needs.

India, which holds the present G-20 presidency, still hasn’t condemned Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

In its latest foreign policy doctrine published in late March, Russia noted it’s going to “proceed to accumulate a very privileged strategic partnership” with India.

Recent Delhi’s longstanding ties with Moscow date back to the Cold War. It stays heavily depending on the Kremlin for its military equipment. This defense cooperation is significant given India’s tensions along the Himalayan border with an increasingly assertive China, said ORF’s Pant.

But Russia hasn’t been capable of deliver critical defense supplies it had committed to India’s military as a result of the Ukraine war, which could strain the connection, said analysts.

In March, the Indian Armed Forces acknowledged to a parliamentary committee that a “major delivery ” from Russia “isn’t going to happen” in a report. “They’ve given us in writing that they aren’t capable of deliver it,” the IAF official said. The report didn’t mention the specifics of the delivery.

“Russia has already delayed the delivery of S-400 anti-missile delivery systems to India as a result of the pressures of the Ukraine war,” said the Jindal School’s Chaulia. “So, there may be an enormous query mark on Russia’s reliability.”

India’s reliance on Moscow, historically, was seen as pivotal “to assist moderate China’s aggression,” he added, to keep up a stable balance of power against Beijing.

Now, the country cannot expect Russia to play “the identical strategic role for India because it used to prior to the Ukraine war. That is due to technological degradation of its military and weakening position because of this of the war,” he said.

Still, Indian authorities will proceed to make every “effort till last minute” to create “some space,” within the Russia-China dynamic, Pant added, “so that the space may very well be exploited by India to make sure its leverage over Moscow stays intact.”

But China can be making moves to strengthen its ties with Russia. In March, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and the 2 leaders vowed to deepen their relations.

Each side sealed a “no limits” partnership in February last 12 months — just before Russia invaded Ukraine — and agreed to don’t have any “forbidden” areas of cooperation.

A “Russian tilt” in favor of Beijing “would clearly be bad for India” if war broke out between each nations, noted Felix K. Chang, a senior fellow on the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank.

Even with no war, “China’s warm relationship with Russia could encourage Beijing to pursue its interests more forcefully in South Asia, whether on its disputed Himalayan border or with India’s surrounding neighbors,” he wrote in April. “That too could shift the ability balance between China and India and result in greater regional tensions.” 

So India must “pick up the pace” in its embrace of the West, Chang added, “given how close the Russian-Ukrainian war has brought China and Russia.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join U.S. President Joe Biden and his counterparts from Australia and Japan at the third Quad leaders summit in Sydney on May 24. The Quad is an off-the-cuff security alignment of the 4 major democracies that was forged in response to China’s rising strength within the Indo-Pacific.

While America sees “China because the principal challenger to U.S. global primacy, it doesn’t see India that way,” said Rajan Menon, director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank.

“On the contrary it views India, nowadays, as a partner to counterbalance China,” he noted.

“That overlapping strategic interest explains why Washington has not reacted to India’s alignment with Moscow in the way in which it has to the ‘no-limits’ friendship China has forged with Russia,” Menon said.

As for Russia, the way it balances this evolving India-China dynamic might be its biggest test, noted Pant.

“It’ll be interesting to see how this triangle works. Previously, it had worked because there was this uniform sense among the many three countries to speak of a multipolar world, where American unipolarity was the goal,” he noted.

“Today, for India, it’s China’s attempt at creating hegemony within the Indo-Pacific is the goal. For Russia and China, the priorities are different than for India,” Pant added. “Russia’s ability to administer India and China might be under the scanner,” as far as Recent Delhi is worried.