India, Russia look for new equilibrium

New Delhi seeks to maintain a balance in ties with both Russia and USA amid new geopolitical realities and China's aggression

When Pakistan in 1971 let loose its soldiers on its own people in what was then known as East Pakistan, the United States and the United Kingdom sent warships to the Bay of Bengal to dissuade India from intervening and stopping the genocide. Moscow, however, firmly stood by New Delhi, the landmark Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation was signed and the Soviet Union navy sent a flotilla from Vladivostok, eventually scaring the British and the American fleets away from the region. India won the war against Pakistan and East Pakistan was liberated into Bangladesh in December 1971.

India on December 6 celebrated the ‘Maitri Diwas’ to commemorate the day it had recognized the newborn nation of Bangladesh back in 1971. Coincidentally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin on the same day. The summit saw India and Russia trying to adapt to the geopolitical realities of the day and readjust the bilateral relations in pursuit of a new equilibrium.

Putin flew to New Delhi to hold the summit with Modi at a time when Moscow’s acrimony with the United States and the European Union escalated over Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine. Modi on the other hand hosted the Russian President amid New Delhi’s growing strategic convergence with the United States in the wake of China’s continued belligerence all along its disputed boundary with India. The two leaders, however, did try to arrest the drift in the relations.

A 2+2 dialogue among the foreign and defence ministers of the two nations also took place on December 6 morning, a few hours before the leaders held the summit. The back-to-back engagements by the end of the day resulted in as many as 28 government-to-government and business-to-business pacts, in addition to a 99-point joint statement titled “India-Russia: Partnership for Peace, Progress and Prosperity”. The most significant outcomes were of course the contract for manufacturing 6,01,427 Russian AK-203 rifles in India and the renewal of the agreement on military-technical cooperation for 10 more years, outlining the ongoing and future possible cooperation in the defence sector. The two documents signalled that India would for now continue with its decades-old defence cooperation with Russia, notwithstanding the US frowns.

Modi said during the summit that “India-Russia friendship” remained “a constant” amid many fundamental changes in geopolitical equations over the past decades. Putin said that Russia considered India “a major power” and promoted military-technical cooperation with India as it did with none of its other partners. He also said that Russia developed and manufactured high-tech military products, with India and in India.

India underlined its “enhanced requirement” of military and military-technical cooperation with Russia to meet the security challenges it was confronted with, particularly the aggression by China along the disputed boundary between the two neighbours.

The summit took place with the spectre of the US CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) sanctions looming large over India for its October 2018 deal to procure five S-400 air defence systems from Russia at an estimated cost of nearly Rs 39,000 crore. Though several US lawmakers and strategic affairs analysts argued in favour of granting India a waiver from the CAATSA sanctions, President Joe Biden’s administration remained non-committal and informally signalled that even if New Delhi gets an exemption for the S-400 contract, it should not expect the same for future big-ticket deals to procure defence equipment from Russia.

Russia has since long been the largest supplier of military hardware to India and has been maintaining low-key defence cooperation with Pakistan. But with the changes in geopolitical landscape and New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington DC, after the landmark India-US civil nuclear agreement of 2008, Moscow, too, responded to Islamabad’s overtures to improve bilateral relations. Russia started discussing the sale of Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan in 2014 and purportedly started delivery of the choppers in 2018, although New Delhi publicly conveyed its concerns over the deal. Russia, in November 2015, also inked a defence cooperation agreement with Pakistan and the two nations had their first military drill in September-October, 2016 – just weeks after India signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) with the US creating a framework to support each other's aircraft, ships and personnel with logistics, fuel and spares.

India turned into a “major defence partner” of the US and kept on signing one defence agreement after another – Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in 2018, Industrial Security Annex (ISA) to General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) in 2019 and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) in 2020. Russia too continued to expand its defence cooperation with Pakistan with regular bilateral military drills, with the last one being held in November 2020. During a visit to Islamabad on April 7 this year, Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced Russia’s plan to provide Pakistan with more “special military equipment” and to conduct more military exercises with Pakistan, both in the mountains as well as in the Arabian Sea.

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Russia has also been stepping up its strategic partnership with China, with the important milestones being the settlement of the border dispute in 1991, signing of the Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation in 2001, and elevation of the relations to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2014. Russia signalled its willingness to consider transfer of defence technology to China, as its military sales to the communist country increased substantially. Russia in December 2017 delivered the second batch of 10 Su-35 fighter jets to China — about a year after the delivery of the first batch of four aircraft. Russia also delivered S-400s to China, which recently deployed two units of the missile defence systems in Holan and Nyingchi, just across Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh of India.

Moscow did quietly play a mediating role between New Delhi and Beijing ever since India and China got engaged in the military stand-off along the LAC in April-May 2020. What it did not like is India’s growing cooperation with the US as well as with Japan and Australia in the Indo-Pacific, both bilaterally as well as within the framework of the Quad – a coalition forged by the four nations to counter expansionist aspirations of China.

The summit and the 2+2 dialogue on December 6 saw Russia conveying to India its “serious concern” over the US role in Asia-Pacific “in the name of so-called Indo-Pacific strategies and (through) creation of closed bloc-type structures”. It had earlier called the Quad a ‘divisive’ and ‘exclusivist’ tool being used by the US to implement its “devious policy” of engaging India against China as well as to undermine Russia’s close partnership with India. Though India argues that its own vision for the Indo-Pacific is inclusive and not against China or any other nation, it obviously could not yet convince Russia. New Delhi of late also supported Russia’s entry into the Indian Ocean Rim Association as a dialogue partner. India obviously wants Russia to play a bigger role in the region as it is consistent with its inclusive Indo-Pacific vision and helps dispel the narrative that it is ganging up with the US to help counter hegemonic aspirations of China.

India’s relations with Russia will of course no longer remain the same as it has been in the past half a century. China continued its military build-up all along its disputed boundary with India. Pakistan of late gained a strategic edge against India after the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. So confronted with security challenges, New Delhi will obviously seek to maintain a balance in its ties with Moscow and Washington DC. But doing so is likely to be more challenging if tension between Russia and the US escalates.

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