An increasingly assertive China closer to home explains PM Modi’s reluctance to criticise President Putin
New Delhi
When 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a recent border clash with China, the military hardware New Delhi sent to bolster its Himalayan frontier was mostly Russian-origin, showing not for the first time its closeness to “longstanding and time-tested friend” Moscow.
Facing an increasingly assertive China closer to home, these ties help explain Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reluctance to criticise Vladimir Putin — a regular visitor — over the Ukraine invasion.
India has abstained on UN resolutions censuring Russia and continues to buy Russian oil and other goods, despite pressure from Western countries.
US President Joe Biden this week called India “somewhat shaky” on Russia.
In the Cold War, officially non-aligned India leaned towards the Soviet Union — in part due to US support for arch-rival Pakistan — buying its first Russian MiG-21 fighter jets in 1962.
These military ties were cemented by two watershed events: India’s humiliating defeat to China in a 1962 border war and the war with Pakistan in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh.
Also read: India says US, Russia ties ‘stand on their own merit’ despite Ukraine war
During the latter, the USSR sent ships to the Indian Ocean to deter a direct US intervention to help Pakistan. Shortly before the two had signed the landmark Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation.
Russia “always remained immune to external pressure and supplied us when we needed it, and have not slipped,” Nandan Unnikrishnan of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation told AFP.
“The Ukraine war doesn’t change our neighbourhood situation, so why should we even consider replacing our long-tested and trusted supplier without any practical replacement?” he said.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 70-85 percent of the Indian military’s hardware was Russian, and in recent years India has sourced more from elsewhere — notably France, the US and Israel — and made more itself.
