Background Paper No. 28
BY Jackson Lopez
I. INTRODUCTION
On July 8, 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India arrived in Russia for the first time since 2019. Many in North America and Europe were surprised at the image of Modi “bear-hugging” Russian president Vladimir Putin, in a show of fraternity with his “dear friend.” The New York Times lamented that the visit “illustrated a sobering reality” of Western failure to isolate Putin. A commentator in The Guardian called Modi’s visit “cynical” and claimed he was working to “opportunistically turn [the Ukraine War] to his advantage.” While such critics should not have been surprised – given the history and depth of India-Russia relations – their responses overlooked a new reality: India-Russia strategic relations have waned over time.
Whatever the optics or rhetoric, historically strong Indo-Russian cooperation has narrowed due to a decline in overall strategic convergence. There are various reasons for this trend, but most crucially China has emerged as Russia’s primary partner during a period of mounting Sino-Indian tensions. This has prompted India to partner more closely with the United States and its allies to maintain a balance in Asia. Weakening Russian capabilities since the Soviet collapse have further contributed to this trend. Although Russia still plays an important role in India’s civil nuclear energy sector along with space cooperation, joint military research, and energy exports, the new strategic realities limit Indo-Russian potential in non-energy trade, investments in the Indian economy, as well as future arms sales and military-to-military cooperation.
Recent India-Russia relations can be examined in four distinct phases. There were developing convergences from 1947 to 1971, coinciding with the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. Next, the period from 1971-1991 encapsulates a period of robust Indo-Soviet cooperation, beginning with the 1971 Friendship Treaty and the relationship’s eventual stagnation. The 1991-2020 period showcases India’s renewed engagement with a weaker Russia in competition with new Indian partners, such as the United States, Japan, and China. Finally, the period from 2020-2024 brought out new India-Russia divergences on China, exacerbated differences on relations with the United States and its allies, as well as an overall decline of the relationship’s importance.
This history suggests that many of the same trends that fostered important strategic convergence between India and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s are now swinging in the opposite direction. Notwithstanding the unlikely prospect of Sino-Indian rapprochement or of a breakdown in Sino-Russian relations, the trend of narrowing Indo-Russia relations is set to continue as Russia and China form a more coherent bloc in Eurasia with converging interests.
II. 1947-1971: DEVELOPING RELATIONS
As India became independent during the last years of Joseph Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union, ties between New Delhi and Moscow were difficult. Despite the Soviet Union establishing early diplomatic relations with India and its staunch support for Indian independence, the Soviets viewed India with suspicion and apathy. Speaking with Indian communist leaders, Stalin described India as “semi-liberated” from Britain and claimed that the Partition of India was, “an act of fraud organized by the British.” Stalin’s personal interpreter wrote that, “India top trims her sails to suit the American imperialists.” While acknowledging India’s policy of nonalignment, Stalin’s engagements with Ambassador Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan showed little interest in diplomacy with India beyond immediate famine relief in 1951.
Stalin’s death in 1953 paved the way for a positive turn in relations. Under Nikita Khrushchev, Moscow pursued closer trade and economic ties. Specifically, the India-Soviet Commercial Agreement of 1953 enabled India to import Soviet machinery paid in rupees and incorporated Soviet technical assistance for industrial equipment. During his 1955 visit to India, Khrushchev established Soviet investment in Indian industry by funding the construction of the Bhilai steel plant and expressed his approval for the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence (Panchsheel) as laying the foundation for future Indo-Soviet diplomatic cooperation.
Though the United Kingdom and the United States dwarfed the USSR in total trade, Khrushchev’s explicit endorsement of Indian industrial policy allowed for direct economic cooperation that the Western powers could not offer. In 1959, the Soviets announced 180 crores rupees (roughly $380 million) in credit for India’s Third Five-Year Plan (1961-1966), mostly going toward government-owned heavy industry and oil projects. Trade also grew rapidly through the 1950s and early 1960s. Closer political and economic engagement laid the groundwork for India’s first major arms purchase from the USSR, consisting of helicopters and support aircraft in 1961. Importantly, the Soviets opposed Pakistani proposals for a United Nations (UN) force to demilitarize Kashmir and Western-backed Portugal’s claim over Goa, which materialized in UN Security Council vetoes in 1957, 1961, and early 1962. India and the Soviet Union would also cooperate for the first time on civil nuclear energy, concluding a knowledge-sharing agreement in 1961.
During the outbreak of the Sino-Indian War in October 1962, the Soviet Union was forced to weigh a growing relationship with India against preestablished ties with China. Initially, Moscow publicly backed China. On October 22, a Soviet memorandum called for an immediate ceasefire, blaming the conflict on foreign “imperialists” and “the reactionary clique of India.” Three days later, an editorial in Pravda denounced the McMahon Line separating India and China as a colonial construction and supported Chinese terms for a ceasefire. At the time, the Soviets needed to project solidarity with Beijing during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But there were already signs that a shift was underway. Sino-Soviet animosity had been brewing and had escalated in 1959, when the Soviets downplayed Chinese claims on the Indian border. China accused the Soviets of violating the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship by providing aircraft to India in 1961. Relations worsened after the Sino-Indian war broke out. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of India warned the Soviet ambassador that the anti-Indian Pravda editorial, “will inaugurate a new period of anti-Soviet hysteria in India.” Only a week later, the Soviet ambassador instead blamed “Chinese leftist dogmatists.” Chinese “fanatics,” he argued, ordered the attack to undermine Soviet leadership in the socialist world. China’s foreign ministry accused the Soviet Union of having, “paid lip service to neutrality but…favoring India and inhibiting China.” By December, Khrushchev had denounced Chinese “nationalism” in a speech to the Supreme Soviet and had his ambassador tell Nehru he would expand ties to preserve Indian nonalignment. This turnaround against China was a calculated Soviet policy relating to the Sino-Soviet split and newfound strategic convergences with India.
The Sino-Indian war created a new impetus for Indo-Soviet relationship as a bulwark against Chinese influence. By the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union quickly became India’s largest arms supplier, moving from providing support aircraft to fighter jets and tanks in 1964 and 1965. From 1962-1966, Soviet arms comprised approximately 70 percent of Indian weapons imports, while the United States and the United Kingdom provided 23 percent. Compared to Western counterparts, Soviet arms were cheap and came with concessionary financing. Moreover, the Soviets were uniquely willing to offer production licenses to boost India’s defense indigenization efforts after 1962. The Soviet Union became India’s third-largest trading partner by the mid-1960s.
Despite closer ties, India and the Soviet Union struggled to address a core strategic divergence in Pakistan. Pakistani president Ayub Khan visited Moscow in April 1965 to revitalize diplomacy, much to India’s consternation. After failing to limit Soviet arms to India or gain support for an international resolution on Kashmir, Ayub Khan later complained that the Soviets pushed Pakistan closer to China. Undeterred, the Soviet Union sought to maintain close relations with both Pakistan and India in order to weaken the U.S. position in the Middle East whilst deterring Chinese intervention in South Asia.
This manifested in the Soviet Union’s stated neutrality and repeated calls for a ceasefire during the second India-Pakistan war in 1965. In a rare Soviet-American convergence for the period, both sides pressured India and Pakistan to declare a ceasefire in September, allowing for Soviet-mediated peace negotiations in Tashkent. In practice, the Tashkent Declaration was politically untenable. Nevertheless, Pakistani-Soviet diplomacy would advance, culminating in Soviet sales of helicopters and other weaponry to Pakistan in the late 1960s. Undeniably, India’s strategic relationship with the USSR was growing, but its consolidation was far from complete, given Soviet overtures toward Pakistan and India’s ambiguous relationship with the United States.
III. 1971-1991: STRONG INDO-SOVIET AXIS
Sino-Soviet border clashes along the Ussuri River beginning in March 1969 would further Soviet willingness to cooperate with India against China. As a result, both sides showed interest in an Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty. Nevertheless, Soviet-Pakistan arms sales presented a major issue. Any future security accords with India were contingent on ceasing all Soviet offensive weapon sales to Pakistan. Fortunately for India, the Soviets soon found the new Pakistani government of Yahya Khan to be consistently moving towards a Sino-American entente, persuading Moscow to agree to cease arms sales to Pakistan in October 1969. Another major issue involved the substantial political risks for Indira Gandhi in committing to an agreement that risked contradicting nonalignment. Without the need to receive security guarantees against an imminent invasion, negotiations stalled.
Grants are project-specific assistance and gifts requested by the recipient country. The recipient countries identify and determine their projects and submit a formal request to an MEA regional division. Thereafter, these requests are assessed for budgets and feasibility before being approved and implemented by DPA-II and for neighboring countries by DPA-III. Between 2000 to 2022, India disbursed approximately $14.7 billion in grants. South Asia received 70 percent while India’s extended neighborhood of Mauritius, Africa, and Eurasia received most of the remainder.
The Bangladesh Liberation War would change this. After advocating for de-escalation in East Pakistan in the Spring of 1971, the Soviets endorsed “immediate action” in the area by the time of External Minister Swaran Singh’s visit to Moscow in June 1971. In July, two major events would push India towards signing the Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union. Firstly, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s visit to China became public on July 15. Secondly, Kissinger told India’s Ambassador to the United States L.K. Jha that Washington would provide “no support to India” in the event of a Chinese invasion. Threatened by a growing Sino-Pakistani axis and isolated from the Western powers, India signed the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty on August 9, 1971. Still, the Soviet Union was firmly against Indian intervention in East Pakistan and, upon the signing of the treaty, envisioned an autonomous East Pakistan in a federation with Islamabad. After a failed diplomatic overture to Pakistan in October, however, the Soviets began to back the Indian war effort by expediting arms deliveries and providing diplomatic backing to an independent Bangladesh. Facing pressure from the United States and China, the Soviets pushed India to declare a ceasefire in December to prevent a wider invasion of Pakistan.
By the war’s end, strategic convergence between India and the USSR was unprecedentedly robust. Beyond mutual defense commitments, Soviet arms sales rose rapidly as India purchased fighter jets, support ships, tanks, and surface-to-air missiles. The Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty also mentioned the Indo-Soviet trade agreement of 1970, which granted most favored nation status and expanded the scope of industrial cooperation, particularly in personnel and knowledge transfers. Article XII of the treaty promised closer ties on scientific cooperation, cinema, radio, art, and literature. The treaty incorporated disparate declarations on trade, economic cooperation, and people-to-people connectivity in one document due to Indian apprehensions about the agreement looking overly militaristic to domestic and international audiences.
Immediately after the Bangladesh Liberation War, the pressures of a Sino-Pakistani invasion subsided. Nevertheless, Indo-Russian relations still enjoyed broad scope. The 1973 Indo-Soviet Economic and Trade Agreement doubled down on previous Soviet industrial projects by promising to significantly expand the Bhilai and Bokaro steel plants and to construct new oil refining and copper mining complexes. Importantly, the agreement developed Soviet assistance for Indian nuclear energy development, furthering a key area of technical cooperation.
Through the early 1970s, Indo-Soviet trade began rising rapidly, from $460 million in 1973 to $830 million in 1975. A symbol of this growth was the launch of India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, in April 1975. The launch was enabled by a 1972 agreement between the Indian Space Research Organization and the USSR Academy of Sciences. The Soviets also supported Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through the 21-month period when a state of emergency was declared in India, during which she visited Moscow in 1976, resulting in a new trade agreement. Gandhi’s subsequent electoral defeat in 1977 did not change relations in practice. Despite Prime Minister Morarji Desai advocating for “genuine” nonalignment, equidistant from the United States and USSR, Soviet foreign minister Gromkyo’s visit in April 1977 concluded an unprecedented 20-year credit of $200 million for India’s industrial development and an agreement providing 5.5 million tons of Soviet oil over the next four years. A follow-up visit by Soviet Communist Party chairman Alexei Kosygin in 1979 would secure further cooperation on nuclear energy and high-level consultations in military technology sharing.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 presented a unique point of tension. Indian prime minister Charan Singh decried the invasion as “unacceptable” and demanded an immediate withdrawal. Shortly afterward, India moderated its position at the UN General Assembly, insisting, “we have no reason to doubt,” Soviet assurances that it came at the behest of the Afghan government. After returning to power in January 1980, Indira Gandhi, while privately calling the conflict “inadmissible,” limited her public reaction to maintain warm relations with the Soviet Union. Despite simultaneous efforts at diplomacy with the United States and Europe, she was associated as pro-Soviet in an internationally unpopular conflict. Her government would conclude a barter agreement with the Soviets in June, importing 700,000 tons of crude and diesel oil in exchange for rice.
Throughout the 1980s, the Soviets rapidly increased arms sales to India, despite disagreements over Afghanistan. India became the first developing country to acquire, among other vessels, Tarantul-class missile corvettes and production rights for the T-72 tank in a $2.4 billion deal. By 1985, trade was at approximately $3.7 billion, second only to India’s trade with the United States at $4.1 billion. Growth in trade was primarily driven by imports of Soviet oil. Despite the war in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union enjoyed favorable public opinion in India, consistently polling well above the United States in favorability surveys conducted from 1981 through 1984.
Upon assuming power, Mikhail Gorbachev sought to revitalize stagnating strategic engagement with India. He visited India in 1986, signing the Delhi Declaration with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, which advocated for a world without nuclear weapons. Moreover, Gorbachev promised $2.2 billion in credits for a new hydroelectric dam and the expansion of steel mills. Upon returning in 1988, Gorbachev agreed to construct two nuclear power plants in India, which was hitherto unprecedented. While this and similar agreements on space cooperation never manifested due to the Soviet collapse, the agreement cleared the way for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.
Notwithstanding economic coordination in certain sectors, strategic convergence in the relationship was declining. Gorbachev’s diplomatic overture to China and internal reforms left many in India feeling insecure about his position. Similarly, India under Rajiv Gandhi was opening diplomacy towards the United States and China, limiting the strategic isolation that tied Delhi and Moscow together. The reaction in India to the attempted August 1991 coup against Gorbachev was mixed. To those frustrated with his reforms, Gorbachev threatened to destroy India’s closest and most stable partner among the major powers. Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao went as far as to describe the hardliner coup as, “a warning to people who favored reforms without controls.”
IV. 1991-2020: RUSSIAN ENGAGEMENT AND GLOBALIZED DIPLOMACY
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the loss of a significant supporter and the process of economic liberalization pushed India to seek new partners. Rao visited the United States in 1992 and 1994, mainly to court investment. He also visited China in 1993 and signed the Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility, which deescalated the border dispute and enabling a growing Sino-Indian relationship. Rao worked for closer economic ties with ASEAN and East Asia through the introduction of the “Look East” policy in 1991.
By 1993, Russian president Boris Yeltsin had come to India in a weaker position than his Soviet predecessors. Between 1990 and 1992, bilateral trade fell almost 75 percent from $3.8 billion to $961 million. Due to the decline of Russian influence, the 1993 Friendship Treaty omits the security provisions found in the 1971 version, instead outlining nuclear energy cooperation, and agreement on global governance issues like disarmament. A major dispute in this period concerned rupee-denominated credits between the USSR and India. With the ruble severely devalued, India had the opportunity to pay far less on its debt. Instead, India voluntarily paid at a much higher rate to facilitate continued large-scale arms and energy purchases. Another area of strategic convergence between India and post-Soviet Russia concerned counterterrorism, namely in Central Asia and Afghanistan. After signing various agreements through the 1990s, the topic became a primary point of discussion in the annual summits beginning in the early 2000s. This would culminate in Russian and Indian support for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and India’s eventual accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2017.
As a follow-up on the 1993 treaty, Vladimir Putin’s visit to India in 2000 inaugurated annual top-level summits and declared a “strategic partnership” between India and Russia. Soon after, the jointly developed BrahMos Aerospace corporation would launch its first missile system in 2001, a landmark achievement for Indo-Russian defense technology cooperation. The Indo-Russian relationship gained substantial traction from Putin’s visit in 2002, which outlined multilateral cooperation between India, China, and Russia. Putin also reaffirmed Russia’s supply of arms sales to India and signed core agreements for civil nuclear energy and space cooperation. Importantly, the 2002 visit coincided with the construction of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, India’s largest nuclear power plant. The North-South Transport Corridor was proposed as a large-scale infrastructure initiative that would facilitate southbound trade from Russia toward Iran and India. Closer military-to-military ties in this period facilitated the inaugural Indra Exercises in 2003. Later, both sides committed to forming multilateral organizations dedicated to advocating for multipolarity. The original Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) Summit in 2009 called for global financial reform and explicitly advocated for a “more democratic and just multi-polar world order.”
The arms relationship proved particularly durable. Russian arms sales saw a sharp increase in the early 2000s and the early 2010s. The Indian military was still reliant on Russian weaponry, as well as Russian-made components and facilities to maintain indigenous military production, with approximately 70-90 percent of the Indian Army’s weaponry imported by or produced from Russian equipment. Nevertheless, India was diversifying its array of economic and security partners buying arms from the United States, France, and Israel, purchasing guided missiles, helicopters, and radar systems.
Against the backdrop of a growing security relationship, India’s reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was muted. National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon declared Russia had, “legitimate interests in Ukraine.” Similar to previous incidents during the Cold War, Indian disapproval of the conflict was limited due to Russia’s strategic importance, especially considering the Indian military’s dependence on Russia. Other areas of the relationship began to decline, however. Russia’s share of India’s arms imports collapsed from 86 percent in 2012 to 49 percent in 2014, partially due to the immediate impacts of Western sanctions. The Russian share of Indian arms imports would only decline from this point onward.
Domestically, Prime Minister Modi’s “Make in India” initiative after 2014 launched unprecedented efforts at defense indigenization but continued seeking joint weapons development with Russia. On a broader scale, Russia’s weakening economy and China’s increasing assertiveness began a shift in the traditional Indo-Russian strategic convergence. To illustrate China’s all-encompassing importance to Russia, in 2019, Russia’s trade with China was worth over $111 billion, while trade with India was worth $11 billion.
V. 2020-2024: Continued Collaboration and strategic Divergences
Sino-Indian clashes in the Galwan Valley in 2020 proved a major watershed. From this point onward, Russia’s close ties with China became an active impediment to Indian engagement. Meeting in February 2022, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping announced a “no limits” partnership outlining closer political, security, and economic engagement. China has since become Russia’s largest supplier of dual-use technologies and is allegedly responsible for directly aiding the Russian military in exchange for advanced missiles, among other technologies, with direct implications for Indian security. Russia was already a somewhat incompatible economic partner, with total trade amounting to one-tenth of India’s trade with the United States in 2020 and 2023 investment totaling one-hundreth of American inflows, roughly on par with Vietnam. However, the broader effects of deteriorating Sino-Indian relations would harm organizations like BRICS, which now faced challenges in delivering on politically important issues and the SCO, whose summit Modi notably declined to attend in 2024. Bilateral engagement still progressed: at the India-Russia 2021 Annual Summit, Modi and Putin emphasized cooperation on joint military research, civil nuclear expansion, and, notably, Indian investment in natural gas in Sakhalin.
India’s initial reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 mirrored its response in 2014. India needed Russian assistance to evacuate its citizens from Ukraine and was awaiting deliveries of Russian S-400 missile systems, rendering outright opposition impossible. Nevertheless, while officially abstaining from UN General Assembly votes condemning Russia, Modi told Putin that, “today’s era is not an era of war,” at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s 2022 Summit in Tashkent, reflecting growing dissatisfaction with Russia’s conduct. On bilateral ties, the war reinstated a key field of Russian-Indian cooperation: gas and oil. From 2021-2023, the value of Russian energy exports increased to India by over tenfold, from $5 billion to $54.5 billion. Russia is currently responsible for around 25 percent of India’s total energy imports, though the share of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia is dwarfed by Qatar, the UAE, and the United States, accounting for less than 0.6 percent of imports in 2023. By contrast, non-energy trade has fallen from 68 percent of bilateral trade in 2019 to barely 17 percent as of September 2024.
Closer Russia-Pakistan cooperation further adds to complications. After signing a defense pact in 2014, Russia delivered transport and attack helicopters to Pakistan in 2015 and 2017. 2016 Russo-Pakistani joint military exercises in Pakistan prompted concerns in India. The outbreak of the Ukraine War in February 2022 coincided with Pakistan president Imran Khan’s visit to Moscow in which both sides touted closer bilateral ties despite the crisis. In June 2024, Pakistan formally accepted Putin’s 2022 invitation to join the North-South Transport Corridor, implicitly challenging India’s position within the framework.
Other aspects of the Russo-Indian relationship are currently being challenged by India’s closer cooperation with the United States. India’s nuclear liability legislation has prolonged Russia’s leading role in India’s civil nuclear sector, but the United States has developed mechanisms in other spheres. The bilateral initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) presents American alternatives to technological areas of Indo-Russian cooperation, like space exploration and military-technical cooperation. Key aspects of these efforts feature joint cooperation on the International Space Station, training programs for Indian astronauts in the United States, as well as the launch of INDUS-X, which focuses on joint military-technological development. Moreover, India’s arms diversification with Israel, France, and the United States – along with indigenization efforts - has accelerated the transition away from Russian reliance. Russia’s share of India’s arms imports in 2023 had fallen to 28 percent, placing it behind Israel for that year. Nevertheless, diversifying away from Russian arms remains a long-term challenge for India regardless of foreign assistance.
VI. ConCLUSION
Growing Sino-Russian ties – manifested in defense cooperation, growing trade, and close strategic cooperation at multilateral bodies – have presented a broad challenge to India. India’s own defense indigenization and the war in Ukraine have limited Russian opportunities to provide technical assistance and weapons for India’s defense sector in recent years. For its part, India has also increased engagement with the United States and its allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. However, the importance of Russian energy exports, driven in large part by global commodity prices, has partly counterbalanced this decline.
The broad decline in India-Russia strategic relations could be reversed under two circumstances. First, should India reach a broad rapprochement with China, including butnot limited to their boundary dispute, it would allow space for it to rekindle a Russia-India-China grouping akin to the early 2000s. Alternatively, should Russia and China experience a political break akin to the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s (coupled with a degree of rapprochement with the United States and its allies), it would enable New Delhi to revitalize relations with Moscow. Both scenarios at present appear highly unlikely.
Despite the dwindling relationship, India will not abandon Russia. The two still maintain important and mutually beneficial ties, and their interests do not directly contradict. But that relationship will increasingly rest on a specific and narrow set of issues, rather than the broad-based convergence that characterized their partnership in its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Dhruva Jaishankar, Nivedita Kapoor, Ammar Nainar, and Nandan Unnikrishnan for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. Any errors that remain are those of the author. This paper reflects the views of the author and does not represent the position of the institution, its affiliates, or partners.
Note: Citations and references can be found in the PDF version of this paper available here.