2025’s hard truth, underlined by year-end Putin visit: India lacks the clout to shape a world in flux

At the end of a year of many setbacks for the Modi government’s foreign policies, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit aptly captured the Indian effort to find its centre of gravity in an era of massive geopolitical upheavals. 

The red carpet-state visit welcome, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi breaking with protocol to receive Putin at the airport, and the images of the two riding out of the airport in the same car, were seen as signals to the world from an India that has often seemed isolated and friendless since Operation Sindoor. 

But beyond the pomp of the state visit, there is what India’s former ambassador to Moscow D B Venkatesh Varma describes as an “essentiality quotient” to this relationship. This aspect may have got lost in the Indian media’s over-the-top coverage of the visit, which in turn seemed determined to convey that having the Russian leader over was Modi’s way of getting even with US President Donald Trump.

Essentiality could mean trust, not acting against each other’s strategic interests, and working to complement each other – “being there for each other”, in the language of today’s relationships. The ties have seen their share of ups and downs – India was dismayed by the Russian sale of defence equipment to Pakistan, and Russia by India’s drive to diversify its weapons procurement. The “no-limits” partnership with China too has raised questions about Russia’s commitment to India, especially the sale of the S400 to China. But Moscow would respond that the system it sold to China is the “export” version with built-in limitations, not the same as what India has. 

The big picture though is that the India-Russia summit, the reason Putin was here, has been an annual exercise for 25 years, barring a few misses. It was instituted in 2000 when the then newly anointed Russian leader visited India, and along with then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, upgraded ties to a “strategic partnership”. At the time, India was yet to emerge from the sanctions imposed on it by several countries, including the US, for its nuclear tests. And Russia was still recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Putin’s visit this time, his first since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, was in the making since last October, when the world was still waiting to find out what president-elect Trump would add to the international churn. 

By the time Putin arrived, India’s trade negotiations with the US were stuck, and it was being punished for buying energy from Russia. Half of the 50 percent tariffs Trump has imposed on India is for buying Russian oil. India reportedly succumbed to US pressure and cut back its purchases of Russian oil. A joint article in a leading newspaper by three western envoys to India – the British High Commissioner and the Ambassadors of Germany and France – attacking Putin over Ukraine, appeared to pile the pressure on Delhi, at a time that an India-Europe FTA is being negotiated. The article indirectly questioned India’s decision to host Putin. 

Amid the constraints, the balancing act has continued. India will reportedly invite Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a visit early next year, European leaders have been invited as chief guests to the Republic Day Parade next month ahead of a scheduled EU-India summit, and there was a meeting of the Quad group on counterterrorism at the same time as Putin was in town. The US undersecretary for political affairs, Allison Hooker, and a host of other US trade officials have arrived in the country for more talks on the long-awaited trade agreement. 

The absence of defence deals during Putin’s visits fed the narrative that the India-Russia summit was “all show.” But it is also true that India is awaiting the delivery of two more squadrons of the S400 missile defence system, delayed by Russia due to its war in Ukraine. 

The other side of all this is the stated commitment of both sides to diversify from defence cooperation and increase bilateral trade to $100 billion as contained in the economic partnership roadmap, also known as Programme 2030. This is not insignificant. 

Putin has made it known from public platforms in Moscow and Delhi that he wants to help offset Trump’s tariffs on India, with more Indian imports. Right now, Indian exports to Russia constitute just about $5 billion of the total two-way trade of about $64 billion. The maximum chunk of this trade is Indian import of Russian crude, one of the reasons for the high US tariffs on India. The value of Russia-China trade, on the other hand, is $245 billion, with China importing energy supplies, and exporting automobiles and other white goods. This trade too is highly imbalanced, but this time in China’s favour. 

If Putin wants to cut current Russian economic dependence on China, which has spiked manifold from the time of the Ukraine war and the western sanctions on Russia that followed, India offers an alternative. For all Trump’s noise over Indian purchases of Russian oil, his push for a deal with Russia on Ukraine is also aimed at securing Russian energy sources and its mineral wealth for the US via his business cronies. Peace in Ukraine will help resolve some foreign policy challenges for India, and Delhi risks cutting its own feet by toeing Trump’s line on its energy relationship with Russia.

Notably, neither the US state department, nor Trump, uncharacteristically for him, made any comments about Putin’s visit to Delhi. The US’s much delayed National Security Strategy for 2025, released at the same time as Putin’s Indian sojourn, casts Russia in non-adversarial terms, and puts resolving Russia’s war in Ukraine, and re-establishing “conditions of strategic stability with Russia” along with Europe, as top US priorities in its pivot back to the “western hemisphere”. China broke its silence three days after the visit, and called for improving trilateral ties between itself, Russia and India.

The language in the US-National Security Strategy 2025 in framing India’s place in the Trump administration's foreign policy makes it clear that it is no longer the “major defense partner” and the trusted counterweight to China that it was in the Biden administration but a country that the US “must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with... to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States (the Quad)”. What about the tariffs then? No mention of them.

The India-Russia summit served to underline what has been obvious for some time now but especially since the beginning of the year – Delhi’s laser-like focus on improving ties with Washington all these years could never be the only game in India’s foreign policy. 

Today, Modi, who once campaigned for Trump among Gujarati desis in the US, cannot risk being in the same room as the US president for fear of being politically embarrassed at home by his claims of brokering the ceasefire with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. The misreading of Trump and the failure to understand MAGA should count as the biggest foreign policy failure of 2025. 

It is not in the character of this government to offer explanations for what went wrong with the US, let alone say mea culpa. What is clear is India neither has the economic clout nor the firepower to determine the direction of global cross currents. It needs to keep all the three major powers in good humour. 

A possible Trump-Xi rapprochement, going by the language in the US NSS 25, which describes China as a “peer”, will leave India out in the cold. With a US-Russia deal likely in the coming weeks, India risks being edged out of high-value economic opportunities it already has but seems willing to forego for the sake of keeping Trump on its side. 

Simply put, beyond the photo-ops, doing business with the three big powers in the manner that is best for India will be the challenge for the next year. It is telling that all this sank in properly in a year of a horrific terrorist massacre in Pahalgam and a four-day war with Pakistan in which China assisted its all-weather friend, the ignominy of international isolation over the war, with the neighbourhood too unwilling to take sides, and watching Trump’s blossoming bromance with Pakistan’s de facto military ruler Asim Munir, for whose capture of absolute power next door a good part of the credit can go to Operation Sindoor.

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