The Indian-Russian Relationship Remains Strong

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

India has embraced Russia in a “special and privileged strategic partnership” that features regular dialogues between the heads of state as well as ministries, substantial advanced arms sales, and intergovernmental commissions to cooperate in trade, energy, science, technology, and culture.

India has also joined Russia in new institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) grouping; and the Russia–india–china trilateral meetings, and has demurred from opposing Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

TRADE PARTNERS

Until 2022, Indian President Narendra Modi and Russian President held annual meetings, alternating between the two countries, in which the partners said they shared “civilizational values” and promised “new heights of cooperation through trust and friendship.”

Trade between India and Russia is reaching new heights. According to the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Russia has become India’s fourth-largest source of imports in the past year. From April to December 2022, imports totalled $32.8 billion, up from $6.58 billion in the same period of 2021.

India has declined to join the West’s sanctions on Moscow and the country is now importing more crude oil from Russia than ever before.

As part of global sanctions on Russia, the Council of the European Union put a new price cap of $60 a barrel on crude oil which originates in or is exported from Russia. It came into force on Feb. 5. For India, the third-biggest consumer of oil in the world, this reduction makes a huge difference and brings multiple benefits for the government.

Because India imports more than 80 per cent of its crude oil, the cap means it can lower energy costs. Furthermore, by turning to Russian oil, India can decrease its dependence on the Middle East, which used to be the source of some 60 per cent of the country's oil imports.

India has bought “a lot of crude, converted it into refined petroleum products and sold it,” Indian Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal told the Nikkei Asia news outlet. “Enhancing trade and economic cooperation between India and Russia is a key priority for the political leadership of both the countries,” the Indian Embassy in Moscow stated in a 2022 briefing on India-russia economic relations.

COLD WAR

The economic and political relationship between the two countries goes back decades, to their long-standing cooperation during the Cold War. Although India was a selfprofessed nonaligned power, by the second half of the Cold War it had clearly gravitated toward the USSR through significant purchases of Soviet defence equipment.

In 1965 the Soviet Union served successfully as a peace broker between India and Pakistan after their 1965 war. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin met with representatives of the two countries and helped them negotiate an end to the military conflict over Kashmir. The Tashkent Declaration was signed in January 1966, stating that the Indian military and the Pakistani military would pull back to their pre-conflict positions.

India and the USSR grew closer with the signing of the Indo-soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1971 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was also more ideologically aligned with the Soviets than with the Americans.

The treaty gave Gandhi the confidence to intervene in the Bangladesh War of Independence against West Pakistani forces that year, as she perceived the treaty as a deterrent to Chinese or American intervention on behalf of Pakistan.

Moscow refrained from condemning India’s 1974 nuclear test and even agreed to ship heavy water for India’s nuclear reactors after the United States and Canada suspended shipment. The Soviets also backed India’s military involvement in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, while India even informally endorsed the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.

Soviet-type economic planning served as a model for the Indian economy, as it transitioned from colonialism and sought to fight poverty. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union that India introduced reforms and opened up its economy to the world.

MILITARY FORCES

The Soviet Union also supplied weapons to India for decades and trained Indian forces in how to use them. India obtained three fifths of its arms from the USSR between 1955 and 1991, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The quantity of Russian contributions to the Indian arsenal has been very significant.

On the other hand, there was a cooler relationship with the United States, which delivered arms to India’s enemy, Pakistan.

More recently, Russia became the first member of the United Nations Security Council to endorse India’s position on Kashmir after New Delhi abrogated the autonomy provisions of the state in 2019, imprisoned political leaders, and reinstituted central control.

In return, India has defended or remained silent on Russian actions in the Syrian Civil War, its 2008 annexation of Crimea and now, the war in Ukraine. In a joint press conference following a 2018 summit with Putin, Prime Minister Modi stated that “Russia and India agree on multipolarity and multilateralism in the world.”

“The Russian-indian partnership will continue,” observed Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“For India, Russia remains an important supplier of weapons,” they have written. “India has not joined the West’s sanctions on Russia. By doing so, it has demonstrated its independent foreign policy.”

Despite American annoyance, this will probably remain the case.