‘Howdy Modi’ redux in Russia

So, it was ‘Howdy Modi’ again. This time in Moscow. Not as raucous as in Houston. An embrace for cameras at a dacha on the outskirts of the Russian capital, but otherwise formal or informal talks with limited video and practically no audio.

‘Biden administration disturbed by Modi-Putin visit during NATO summit’, declared the Washington Post. ‘Why is Modi sucking up to Putin? It’s simple and cynical: China and oil,’ was the Guardian’s headline of an opinion piece.

‘Fury as Indian PM Narendra Modi hails “memorable welcome” in Moscow and schmoozes with Putin just hours after’, screamed a story in the UK’s mass circulated Daily Mail.

In the midst of a deep freeze in relations between the West and Russia, manifesting in warfare in Ukraine, the western media reaction was predictable. In their eyes, this was disloyalty. After all, hadn’t Narendra Modi sworn partnership with the West?

Maintaining equidistance from quarrelling world powers was an enlightened Nehruvian idea. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, P.V. Narasimha Rao did not abandon this policy, with a deft shift from ‘nonalignment’ to ‘multi-alignment’. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh toed the same line.

As soon as Modi captured the levers of government in Delhi, he gave vent to his ingrained adoration of the US, the superpower that had captured his imagination during sojourns there as an RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) indoctrinator. He promptly tilted South Block towards it.

Modi also consolidated India’s already augmented relations with France, another country wary of Russian president Vladimir Putin. He embraced Japan, very much in the US’s orbit since the Second World War. And when his outreach to China backfired, he hugged another satellite of Washington—Australia.

It was possible to build on Singh’s legacy, namely friendship with Russia and the West and a working relationship with China, without leaping into the US’s lap. But Modi preferred to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

The ‘informal’ meetings with Vladimir Putin in Sochi and Xi Jinping in Wuhan in 2018—to catalyse their chemistry with Modi—were proof that the brinkmanship wasn’t working. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale sensed displeasure in Russia and China about Modi cosying up to the US.

China had, in fact, been on the verge of infiltrating Indian soil at Doklam in 2017, withdrawing only after a tense standoff. Gokhale’s initiative worked with Putin: New Delhi subsequently presented him with defence orders worth billions of dollars. But it didn’t with Xi: Chinese troops violated the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh in 2020 and have yet to pull back.

With discounted crude oil and gas purchases from Russia while it was/ is at war with Ukraine, India risked economic sanctions from the US. In 2022, when the US secretary of state Antony Blinken asked Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar to explain why India needed to maintain close contact and economic links with Russia, the latter is believed to have replied it was to prevent Moscow and Beijing becoming more intimate—which neither India nor the US want.

However, if that was indeed the objective, it has clearly failed: Putin recently hailed current Russia–China ties as the ‘best in history’. Modi was entirely within his rights to visit Moscow. India is crucially dependent on Russian military hardware and crude oil. Putin, though, trapped Modi with the timing of the visit.

To stage the trip head-to-head with the NATO summit in Washington served his purpose of cocking a snook at the western military alliance that has lined up behind Ukraine.

Putin enticed his guest with Russia’s highest civilian award, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, which was announced in 2019 and ceremonially presented on 9 July 2024. It was a photo-op Modi could not resist! His service to India– Russia ties has indeed, as the Russians put it, been exceptional. No Indian politician has lavished Moscow with such economic bounty, and that when Russia faces crippling sanctions from the West and its allies.

In the April–June quarter, the trade turnover between the two countries was $17.5 billion, of which Indian exports amounted to $1.2 billion. By the end of this financial year, the volume could approach $70 billion, with only about $5 billion constituting Indian exports. Russia has never had it so good.

In the agreements reached between Modi and Putin, there was no reference to speeding up weapons deliveries. In January, Reuters reported that Russia’s ability to meet its obligation to India was ‘hobbled by the war in Ukraine’. It quoted an expert in a Delhi think tank as saying: “We are not likely to sign any major military deal with Russia. That would be a red line for Washington.”

In April, defence writer Rahul Bedi pointed out that two of the five S-400 air defence systems from Russia are still outstanding. India is also slated to receive a nuclear submarine on lease by 2025. “The lease could be scrapped,” Bedi was reported to have said.

Russia was also to produce four frigates for India, but all is reportedly quiet on that front. Modi tried to assuage US anger about his visit by claiming he had told Putin ‘a solution (vis-à-vis Ukraine) cannot be found on the battlefield’. Washington was unimpressed. Matters were made worse by a missile strike on Kyiv, which hit a children’s hospital, on the day of Modi’s arrival in Moscow.

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The US administration is displeased about Modi’s record on multiple fronts, but hasn’t made India pay for it. Its state department’s annual report on human rights practices in India, released on 22 April, alleged ‘credible reports of arbitrary and unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by the government, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, arbitrary arrest or detention, political prisoners or detainees, transnational repression against individuals in another country… serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom’.

Such dissatisfaction, coupled with the provocation of Modi’s visit to Moscow, the timing of which helped Putin dilute international unity against him, makes quite a cocktail of western grievances against India.

Of course, Modi’s government knows that punitive action is unlikely for now: India is, after all, an attractive market and its government’s purchasing power is seen in western capitals as a buffer against Chinese expansionism. Washington is capable, though, of stalling supplies of superior military hardware.

This would be awkward for India, since Russia is not meeting deadlines amid the necessity to deter Beijing’s belligerence.