Balancing act
Putin used the Indian soil to take a snipe at the US, putting it in a spot
The summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin has tested India’s ability to do a balancing act so as not to get caught between the brittle relationship between the US and Russia over Ukraine and the proposed Summit for Democracy. For the record, Modi and Putin reaffirmed their commitment to enhancing ties. Significantly, it was Putin’s second visit outside Russia since the pandemic’s outbreak, after he visited Geneva this June to meet US President Joe Biden. The New Delhi visit underlined Russia’s importance to India as a provider of defence systems. Russia handles over half of all Indian arms imports, technology and joint production agreements. Russia has also agreed to lease a nuclear-powered submarine to India. The icing on the cake is Russia’s long-range S-400 ground-to-air missile defence system which initially attracted the displeasure of the United States. It was expected at one time that despite the warm relations between the US and India, Washington might sanction India under CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act), which warns of sanctions for any country buying arms from Russia. That has not come to pass yet, but the fact remains that India looked to Russia, and not the US, for its defence needs. In the case of the nuclear-powered submarine, too, it looked to Russia. Interestingly, the AUKUS pact of September will allow Australia to become the first non-nuclear weapons State to acquire a similar nuclear-powered submarine.
Even as Modi and Putin vowed to cement their unique ties, New Delhi realised that Russia used Indian soil to take a snipe at the US. Its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recalled that the US tried to undermine Russia-India cooperation on the S-400 deal and tried to make India obey American orders. “We”, Lavrov said, witnessed how the US tried to make India “to follow the American vision of how this region should be developed”. It appears that Russia used Putin’s visit to put the US in a spot by leaning more heavily than required on its friendship with India. That line of thinking is open to interpretation because the US has not followed up on the sanctions threat. After all, it understands the challenges India faces from its neighbours in the west and east. Also, the US and India have their association in the Indo-Pacific in the form of QUAD. Lavrov’s statement, however, may have more to do with two areas of current friction between Russia and the US. One is the Russian troop movement near Ukraine’s borders amid speculations of a conflict. Lavrov’s remarks came just a day before the Biden-Putin virtual summit on the issue. The US has said it will send reinforcements to Nato’s eastern flank if Russia invades Ukraine. The second issue is Biden’s invite to 100-odd countries to his Summit of Democracy on December 9 and 10. Ukraine has been invited to the summit, but Russia stands excluded.
Source: The Pioneer
