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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow hardly comes as a shock. India, maintaining its traditional stance of neutrality, has yet to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In the current global scenario, however, staying neutral effectively means siding with Russia, the aggressor, Dr Anastasia Piliavsky, senior lecturer in anthropology and politics at King’s College London’s India Institute, explained to Byline Times.
Justifying his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin with peacemaking rhetoric, Modi spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, before visiting Moscow on 8 July. While in the Kremlin, where he embraced Putin and was awarded Russia’s highest civilian award, the Russian military launched a strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv.
A video of a smiling Putin calling Modi “my dearest friend” and telling him that he was “delighted to see him” went viral in India, the BBC reported.
This “peace mission” appeals to the Indian public for several reasons, said Dr Piliavsky. It is consistent with the non-alignment doctrine introduced by Nehru, which states that India will not align with any war or take sides.
The preference for negotiation and agreement is deeply rooted in Indian culture. India’s history, apart from the 1947 partition with Pakistan, has seen little large-scale violence. The lingering nostalgia for the Soviet Union and Russia’s strong presence in the country’s information space also play a role.
The Kremlin’s narrative of peace negotiation dominates Indian media, while Ukraine struggles for visibility. Despite Zelenskyy’s digital diplomacy efforts, Ukraine remains largely absent from India’s political discourse.
Globally, Modi’s friendliness with Putin has been met mainly with skepticism—with notable exceptions.
Who is Modi?
Widely popular in India, Modi, the Prime Minister since May 2014, rose to power from poverty and low caste through the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, The Indian People’s Party).
The party traces back to a Hindu nationalist strand in Indian political ideological life, said Dr Piliavsky, with “India for Hindus” at the core of the party’s ideology, with demands of Muslims and other religious minorities expelled, killed, absorbed, and converted to Hinduism.
While supporters of the Hindu nationalist agenda are still around, the project has failed. During ten years of Modi’s unopposed rule, no major waves of communal violence occurred, apart from a few terrible incidents.
Modi’s main national opposition is the Congress party. The party of Gandhi and Nehru, started as an anti-British, anti-imperial movement, had a monopoly on power in India for three decades, before losing influence.
Modi’s background sets him apart from the British-educated, wealthy elite Congress leadership. The current international coverage of India, dominated by a Congress-loyal elite fundamentally opposed to BJP and Modi, is unbalanced, noted Dr Piliavsky. Both westernised Indian and western commentators claiming that Modi is a dictator and his government is totalitarian have been proven wrong: Modi has been elected for the third time in a democratic election.
Having very little national opposition, Modi won the first two terms running not on a Hindu nationalist platform but on the promise of economic development, providing jobs, improving the economy, and improving India’s global reputation. Indians, including Muslims, have voted for him in large numbers.
During the last election in 2024, however, Modi gained a weak victory and his party had to form a coalition. The outcome is new to Modi, who, before becoming prime minister, in 2001 – 2014, was the chief minister of Gujarat state enjoying a single-man rule. Now he has to concede and run a coalition, and to stay in power, Modi has to work on his mandate: the economy, said Dr Piliavsky.
Enter Economy
The weak performance of the BJP party is due to the failure to meet the expectations of the crucial electorate group: farmers.
Even though Modi has effectively raised the poorest Indians out of poverty, his domestic economic policy focused on keeping prices, especially food prices, low in cities at the expense of the medium and largest farmers.
Overall, the price of the cost of living has risen. The size of household debt is at its highest ever. Farmers are under pressure due to global warming, with droughts being a perennial threat. They are being debarred from selling at proper market prices because Modi is appeasing his historic electorate, the urban population. The BJP’s main electorate has always been urban: it is not a cast, class, or religious divide but a city vs. village.
Even though macro-economically India is doing well—its GDP and investments are growing, and the major banking crisis Modi had inherited is resolved—the Indian Prime Minister needs a breakthrough to solve the economic problem, noted Dr Piliavsky.
Enter Russia
The weak victory explains the real reason for Modi’s visit to Russia: the discussion of the oil trade and military hardware.
While ties with the Russian Federation at the present moment might present problems to India’s reputation globally, the direct benefits are tantalising.
India-Russia cooperation is not a new development; it spans decades. India exports pharmaceuticals, telecom instruments, iron and steel, marine products, and machinery to Russia while importing crude oil, petroleum products, coal, coke, pearls, precious stones, fertiliser, vegetable oil, gold, and silver from Russia.
In the 2023-24 financial year, due to robust energy cooperation, trade between India and Russia rose to nearly $65 billion, and imports from Russia amounted to $60 billion, while exports from India tottaled $4 billion. Trade development, particularly a maritime corridor between Chennai and Vladivostok, is a key focus in talks.
Crude Oil Trade: Avoiding Sanctions
Buying crude oil from Russia at a very low cost is of utmost importance for Modi’s economy.
Since 2021, India’s Russian crude oil imports have gone up 20 times, according to Dr Piliavsky, and the country is now importing more than two million barrels of crude oil daily. Western sanctions work on refined oil but not on unrefined, crude oil. Successfully avoiding sanctions, India refines Russian oil and sells it to various countries worldwide, including Europe.
Overall, the Modi—Putin meeting is a sanctions-avoiding meeting. India and Russia worked on increasing crude oil trade and expanding the capacities to refine oil. The sanctions on the Russian vessels that export oil are being sidelined.
Additionally, India is working with Russia to find vessels to export Russian oil to avoid sanctions. India isn’t facing a huge amount of pressure from the United States about closing the channels of Russian support.
Modi and Putin had to resolve the currency problem created by the Swift system shutdown in Russia. Unable to trade in dollars, countries turned to their own currencies, rubles and rupees. About 8 billion rupees of Russian money got stuck in Indian banks.
The countries resolved the issue in two ways. Firstly, Russia invested the money in the Indian market, which was beneficial to Russia as the market was doing well, and into Indian infrastructure, which, in turn, was beneficial for India. Secondly, the United Arab Emirates currency, dirham, is now used to trade in crude oil which allows both countries to do more deals.
India is not willing to use the Chinese currency yuan, as India and China are competing for strategic influence in South Asia. In June 2020, a confrontation along the disputed China-India border resulted in at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers killed and left a sour aftertaste.
Modi missed last week’s summit in Kazakhstan of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security grouping founded by Moscow and Beijing. India is concerned with Russia’s growing partnership with China.
Defence deal
Russia is a major defence supplier for India, delivering 60% of India’s military equipment and systems. Russian-made tanks comprise 97% of India’s 3,740 tank fleet. Just before Modi visited Moscow, Russia’s state export company, Rostec, signed an agreement to manufacture advanced armour-piercing “Mango” tank shells in India for the T-90 tank.
In 2020-2021, India started shifting away from Russia’s military hardware. It had a major deal with France with a fighter jet that they purchased in 2021, said Dr Piliavsky. About 60% of India’s military capacity comes from France and it is now buying more American systems. Notably, Ukraine had been selling tanks to both India and Pakistan, a country that is perceived as an adversary in India.
Yet, the country is still substantially dependent on Russia who has promised to deliver the two remaining air defence systems S-400 of the five that they had a deal on.
Enter BRICS
Apart from direct profiteering, India is interested in maintaining and building up relations with Russia.
Modi’s foreign policy is considered successful, highlighted by events like hosting the G20 summit and celebrating a moon landing. His Kremlin visit is part of several events that have happened over the last year that show the rise of BRICS, an intergovernmental organisation comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.
BRICS was designed to bring together the world’s most important developing countries, to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier nations of North America and Western Europe, according to the BBC.
“The expanded group has a combined population of about 3.5 billion, or 45% of the world’s inhabitants. Combined, members’ economies are worth more than $28.5 trillion – about 28% of the global economy,” the broadcaster reported. With its attempts to break the dollar monopoly being the key strategy, BRICS can be seen as “a historic shift of tectonic proportion,” said Dr Piliavsky.
Enter Austria
From Moscow, Modi arrived to Vienna on an official visit. “The Austrian government emphasised the importance of economic relations with India” and highlighted the role BRICS, especially India, could play in establishing peace in Ukraine, said Dietmar Pichler, the founder of the Disinformation Resilience Network Vienna, in an interview with Byline Times.
“The visit was met with criticism not only from the Ukrainian community in Austria. Questions arose as to why Austria, unlike Switzerland, refused to attend the NATO summit in Washington DC, choosing to host a nationalist politician fraternising with the politician under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.
“Austrian media reported on the Prime Minister’s state visit with surprising skepticism, diverging from the enthusiasm and optimism expressed by the Austrian government and its somewhat naive view of the role of the BRICS community regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” said Pichler.
The decision to skip the NATO summit could be related to the low popularity of NATO in neutral Austria and the upcoming parliamentary elections in autumn 2024
Dietmar Pichler, founder of the Disinformation Resilience Network Vienna
“The decision to skip the NATO summit could be related to the low popularity of NATO in neutral Austria and the upcoming parliamentary elections in autumn 2024.
Pichler explained that the “activities of the Austrian officials related to NATO often provoke furious reactions” and noted that over the last 50 years, “neutrality has become a state ideology for many Austrians, resulting in unusually close relations with countries such as the Russian Federation as opposed to Western countries”.
West’s Inaction Fuels Putin’s Expansion
By strengthening its relationship with India, Russia not only secures a key ally in South Asia but also gains a foothold to influence the region’s political dynamics and navigates western sanctions.
For the Kremlin, Modi’s visit and Austria’s silent approval go beyond image-making campaigns. Putin seeks to build a coalition of nations that either support its actions or remain neutral, thereby undermining the unified stance of Western countries on the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Moscow aims to rally support from neutral countries, reshaping the global political landscape to its advantage. The strategy is part of a larger geopolitical game.
By overlooking these developments and failing to exert enough pressure on India and other countries considering siding with Russia, the West faces a grave risk. This failure allows Russia to expand its influence unchecked, increasing the likelihood of a significant realignment of global power that favours Russian interests.
The lack of a cohesive and forceful response from Western nations emboldens Putin, paving the way for further aggression and territorial expansion. The situation risks escalating into a broader conflict, potentially leading to World War III.
The stakes are higher than ever. The world stands on a precipice, and the actions—or inactions—of today could determine the fate of global peace for generations to come. The West must recognise the urgency of the threat and take decisive action to counter Russia’s expansionist ambitions before it is too late.
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