Why does Russia matter to India so much? Jaishankar sums it up for US audience

The long-standing alliance between India and Russia has come under close international scrutiny in the past couple of years. Since the unfolding of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in late February 2022, India has repeatedly abstained from criticising Russia at the United Nations. However, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met both the heads of state — President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine — several times recently in pursuit of peace.

What exactly is at stake here? An India-Russia relationship that goes back decades and may be too valuable to be jeopardised.

Explaining the ties to the American audience on Tuesday, Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr S Jaishankar summed it up in three words: geopolitics, military, and economics. He was speaking at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York City.

“We have traditionally [had] a strong relationship, and for the future of the relationship, there are benefits for us. So, it’s not just a look back, it’s also a look ahead,” said Jaishankar, who was in the United States with PM Modi and other global leaders for the UN General Assembly High-Level Week 2024 (September 23-27).

“First, you look at the map of Eurasia. It makes sense for those countries which don’t have direct borders with each other to develop strategic relationships, which is how they serve each other’s interests. In our own history after Independence, we have never really had anything other than a positive experience with the Soviet Union and then with Russia,” he added.

Eurasia is a geopolitical term that refers to the enormous landmass made up of Europe and Asia, which many geographers have called a “super continent”, covering 36.2 percent of Earth. With about 93 countries, many of which are very rich in natural resources, there is much inter-dependency on food, oil and gas, and minerals, helping each other become more productive and stable.Russia has openly acknowledged India’s role in Eurasiaas optimistic, recognising its trade and economic foothold.

The second reason, as rationally explained by Jaishankar, was military partnership, and Russia’s willingness to support India against external hostile forces.

“During the period of the Cold War, when the US and [other] Western countries generally tended to prefer, at least in our region, dictatorships like Pakistan, we actually had a 40-year period where the West was primarily arming Pakistan,” said Jaishankar. “So we turned to the Soviet Union as a military partner.”

The Cold War, a wide period from 1947 to 1991, was an addendum of sorts to World War II, which had turned the United States and the Soviet Union into formidable superpowers.

India developed close relations with the Soviet Union around the mid-1950s. The latter helped mediate a ceasefire to end the war between India and Pakistan in 1965, and then again supported India during a 1971 war against the same rival.

In 1991, the Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed and split into 15 independent countries, the largest being Russia. A treaty of Indo-Russian friendship and co-operation was signed in 1993, the same period when Soviet arms were helping India’s army, air force, and navy.

It is not easy for India to forget that its first aircraft carrier,INS Vikramaditya, came from Russia.

“So, we have a long defence and security relationship other than the strategic and the geopolitical equations,” said Jaishankar.

The third point was economic, reiterated the Indian minister. The nature of the Indian economy is such that it is a large natural resources consumer, whether those resources come from Russia, Australia, Indonesia, or the Gulf countries.

“As Russia today turns more towards Asia because of its current tensions with the West, for us, there are certain economic complementarities here which come to the fore,” said Jaishankar.

Russia is India’s biggest supplier of crude oil,accounting for almost 40 per centof India’s total oil purchases, followed by Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Just this July, India bought SGD 2.8 billion worth of crude oil from Russia.

Interestingly, there is no difference of opinion in India between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (and its coalition allies) and the main opposition party Indian National Congress, when it comes to the relationship with Russia. Indeed, the ties with Russia were nurtured by the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India.

At the same New York City venue earlier this month, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who had previously served as the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and currently holds important parliamentary positions, had referred to India’s high dependency on Russia’s natural resources and what the country does with it.

“India is a very, very major purchaser of Russian oil and gas, so Mr [Narendra] Modi can rightly turn to the Indian public and say, ‘If you don’t like my Russia policy, you are getting cheaper oil and gas because of it’,”remarked Tharoor at the Jaipur Literature Festivalin New York, while also saying that abstentions from the UN votes had put India in a position that seemed to convey to the world that because Russia was a friend, “we can’t speak truth to it”.

India also imports more crude oil than required for its domestic consumption. So, what does it do with that excess reserve? “We send it off to the world’s largest refinery in Jamnagar, where it is refined and processed and then shipped off and exported to be bought by… who? By Americans and Brits!” exclaimed Tharoor, who also gave PM Modi the credit for speaking to both presidents Zelenskyy and Putin in the past few months.

PM Modi met President Putin in July 2024 — the trip to Moscow was the first foreign visit by Modi after winning a third term as prime minister of India — and they are set to meet again in October on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.

The Indian leader met President Zelenskyy in August 2024 on a visit to Kyiv, the capital of war-torn Ukraine, their second meeting after a June 2024 conversation at the G7 Summit in Italy. PM Modi again met the Ukrainian leader during the ongoing UNGA High-Level Week in New York City.

On the Russia-Ukraine war, Jaishankar said he believed that the conversations India had been having with both country leaders were helpful, as “there aren’t that many countries and that many leaders today who have the ability or the willingness to engage both Moscow and Kiev at the same time”.

Jaishankar spoke about a multipolar world, where relationships were exclusive, emphasising that every country wanted to get the best of the international order in the most effective way.

“It requires a certain amount of care and dexterity to manage [such relationships], but it has to be done, because it is not feasible to expect that big countries constrain their options and don’t deal with other countries, not because of their [own] interests but because somebody else has a problem with those countries,” said Jaishankar, who has also been referred to as ‘Modi’s Messenger to the World’.