Published By : Conrad Von Moltke
Posted On : March 17, 2022
Amongst an unprecedented wave of global backlash levied against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, one prominent nation has remained reserved in its criticism of Putin. India has refused to directly condemn Russian aggression, calling instead for the cessation of hostilities and continued diplomacy. The 1.4 billion-strong democracy – the world’s largest – considers Russia and the U.S. crucial allies, and has adopted a neutral stance it hopes will allow it to maintain relations with both Moscow and the West.
This was showcased on the February 25th United Nations Security Council Resolution vote denouncing the invasion, from which India (along with China and the UAE) abstained. In two successive UN votes, on March 2nd and 4th, India again abstained, sidestepping the censure of Russian aggression on the international stage.
Indo-Russian relations
At the heart of India’s neutrality is a dilemma familiar to any world leader and one that Putin, in his gamble, has sought to exploit in the West: balancing practicality with principles. Indo-Russian relations are deep-rooted, reaching back to the Cold War. At that time, Moscow was one of India’s main arms suppliers and backed them diplomatically over issues like the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. Today, their “special and privileged strategic partnership” remains strong, with 70% of India’s defensive arsenal and half of its arms imports between 2016 and 2020 coming from Russia. Moscow’s continued support for Indian territorial claims (particularly over the Kashmir region) and their willingness to assist New Delhi in areas the West will not – like with nuclear submarine construction – has cemented Russia as a valuable Indian ally.
Ongoing border tensions with China and India’s long-time rival, Pakistan, means New Delhi will not endanger a steady supply of weapons from their main arms dealer over a conflict they feel is geographically and politically removed from them. Furthermore, Indian decision-makers can’t afford to push Russia deeper into Beijing’s orbit, when Western sanctions are already accelerating that phenomenon. Pulled by the democratic responsibility to uphold territorial sovereignty on one side, and their security demands on the other, India has chosen the latter.
As the West Shouts, India Shrugs
Although Indian officials maintain that their abstention is not tacit approval for Putin’s actions, the U.S. and Europe have expressed frustration over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s equivocation. U.S. Department of State official Donald Lu voiced the possibility of punishing India for its reliance on Russian defensive equipment, intending to indirectly target Putin by pressuring New Delhi to distance itself from Moscow. Meanwhile, a leaked American diplomatic cable from earlier this month stated that India’s stance places it “in Russia’s camp, the aggressor in this conflict.” New Delhi has countered by claiming American hypocrisy, given Washington’s half-hearted disapproval of Chinese aggression at their border with India and the U.S.’s refusal to sell the country the latest version of its missile defense system – which could reduce its reliance on Russian arms.
Ultimately, Modi can afford to dismiss concerns over Western reprisals because of the pivotal role India plays as a bulwark against Beijing’s growing influence. The shared interest in containing Chinese expansionism has incentivized deeper ties between India and the West, most evident in the QUAD security alliance composed of Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.
New Delhi recognizes that Washington will likely not risk endangering this vital relationship by coaxing a more assertive Indian response.
Moreover, unlike the tremendous display of popular support for Ukraine in the West, there is comparably little domestic pressure in India to renege on the entrenched Russo-Indian relationship. In fact, Putin’s popularity among Indian nationalists – Modi’s main voter base – saw the Twitter hashtag #IstandwithPutin trend on Indian social media in the days following the invasion.
This may yet change, as calls mount for Modi’s government to accelerate the evacuation of thousands of Indian students trapped in Ukraine, following the death of an Indian student during Russia’s shelling of Kharkiv.
The cost of neutrality
Although New Delhi has been spared substantive Western action over their stance towards Russia, they will almost certainly feel the economic blowback from Russian exports sanctioned by the West, especially energy. While Russian oil makes up only three percent of India’s imported crude, India’s domestic oil industry will likely raise prices to meet climbing international benchmarks and recover their losses. New Delhi has also recently expressed interest in purchasing cheap Russian oil, despite Western efforts to isolate Moscow.
The real cost to India, however, is a moral one. Regardless of how much damage the invasion brings Moscow, Putin will sooner double-down than withdraw from his war with Ukraine. As the conflict escalates, possibly to the use of biological or chemical weapons, civilian casualty counts will grow and Modi will find abstention increasingly hard to justify.
Strategic neutrality, a central feature of Indian foreign policy since the cold war, is now being tested by “the most violent act of unprovoked aggression in Europe since 1939.” As Modi finds himself in the unenviable position of trying to negotiate security needs with moral imperatives, he must come to terms with the reality that sitting on the fence too long will hurt the credibility of a democracy already shaken by the domestic growth of illiberalism.
Edited by Theo Malhotra.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Studies or the Political Science Students’ Association.
Photo by Mohit Singh and obtained via Flickr under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
As sanctions over Ukraine war mount, Russia turns to India to buy oil and arms
By Gerry Shih
March 17, 2022
NEW DELHI — When Russia faced international condemnation and sanctions after President Vladimir Putin launched his Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, India stayed on the diplomatic sidelines.
Now, as those economic sanctions begin to bite, Moscow is again turning to India.
India, the world’s biggest oil importer behind China and the United States, has agreed to purchase 3 million barrels of Russian oil at a heavy discount, an Indian official said Thursday. The purchase, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is relatively small given Russia’s production and Indian demand. But the volume could increase in the coming months and reinforce a growing perception that India is determined to preserve its extensive trade and military ties with Moscow, even as the United States and its allies urge governments around the world to isolate Russia.
India avoids condemning Russian invasion of Ukraine and stays aloof on Western coalition
Aside from the oil deal, the Indian government is also exploring ways to maintain trade with Russia by reviving a Cold War-era arrangement called the rupee-ruble trade, according to two other Indian officials with knowledge of the matter. The mechanism, which would be akin to a ledger of trade between the two countries, would let Indian and Russian firms do business while bypassing the need to use U.S. dollars — the predominant currency of international trade — and lowering the risk of potential U.S. sanctions
The three Indian officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. “Eighty-five percent of India’s oil comes from imports, so we always look for good options,” one of the officials said. “If that includes a good package coming from the Russian side, and there’s no bar on buying from Russia, then let’s accept that.”
The Indian officials characterized the ruble-rupee ledgers, which will probably be set up at Russian and Indian banks that are not exposed to the U.S. financial system, as a solution to help the Indian economy and its exporters rather than a way to evade potential U.S. sanctions. India trades with Iran, another country under U.S. sanctions, using a similar rial-rupee trade arrangement.
In recent weeks, India has drawn condemnation from some U.S. lawmakers after it repeatedly abstained from criticizing Russia at the United Nations. But Biden administration officials have often stopped short of criticizing an Asian giant that is seen as a crucial part of its strategy to counter China.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters she did not believe that Indian purchases of Russian oil would violate existing U.S. sanctions.
“But also think about where you want to stand when history books are written about this moment,” Psaki added, without explicitly naming India. “Support for the Russian leadership is support for an invasion that obviously is having a devastating impact.”
India’s special relationship with Russia was highlighted this month when the Russian military gave India “special input” about when and to where its stranded citizens should flee the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, while Russian military officers offered to fly Indians, specifically, out of the war zone.
As Russia’s military onslaught in Ukraine sends refugees scattering, Moscow extends a helping hand to one group: Indians
India is not the only country maintaining trade relations with Russia. Many European countries, including U.S. allies in NATO, continue to purchase Russian energy even though the United States and Britain have announced domestic bans. And India’s oil purchases probably would not amount to a game-changer for Putin’s war effort. Russia’s most important customers are Europe and China; India accounted for about 3 percent of Russia’s exports in 2021 and sources most of its oil from the Persian Gulf, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
But the two countries’ cooperation in the energy sector has deepened in recent years. In 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Putin oversaw a $13 billion deal between Rosneft and a refinery in Modi’s home state of Gujarat that represented India’s largest-ever injection of foreign investment and Russia’s largest-ever outbound deal. Indian energy companies, meanwhile, have invested $16 billion in Siberian oil fields.
As talk about the oil purchase ramped up last weekend, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak called Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to express Russian interest in “further attracting Indian investment to the Russian oil and gas sector and expanding Russian companies’ sales networks in India,” according to a statement issued by the Kremlin.
Puri said in the Indian Parliament this week that the Modi administration was working hard to keep gas prices low and that he was in talks with “all levels” of the Russian government about a deal. The Indian Oil Ministry has otherwise not publicly commented about the matter.
Many Indian industry executives and observers say it would be unfair for the West to pressure India to quit Russian oil. The European Union said this month it would wean itself off Russian energy “as soon as possible,” but large countries that depend on Russia, such as Germany, have not immediately cut imports.
“Has Europe or any other significant taker of Russian oil and gas reduced its consumption yet?” said Subhash Kumar, the former chairman of the Indian state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the country’s largest crude-oil company. If India, which is not involved in the Ukraine conflict, did not buy discounted Russian oil, there would be other takers on the market, he said.
Other prominent commentators have cautioned against proceeding with the purchases, mostly due to its optics. “From a moral standpoint, the decision to buy Russian oil and gas at a discounted rate because of the crisis in Ukraine could be questionable,” Vikram Singh Mehta, the former chief executive of Shell India and former chairman of the Brookings Institution’s India arm, told local media outlets this week.
In the coming months, India’s trade with Russia is likely to continue in another crucial realm besides oil: defense. Largely as a legacy of the Cold War — when the Soviet Union gave India everything from help setting up steel plants to blueprints for MiG fighter jets — around 85 percent of Indian weapons today came from the Soviet Union or Russia, according to a 2021 analysis by the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
Amit Cowshish, a retired Indian defense ministry official who previously oversaw India’s military acquisitions, said the armed forces would be badly crippled within a year if India could not trade with Russia.
“There’s ammunition, subassemblies, critical licenses, all of which would run out, and it wouldn’t be in the U.S. interest to see an Indo-Pacific partner be crippled or alienated by sanctions,” he said.
So far, Biden administration officials have avoided criticizing India’s continued relationship with Russia. During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, lawmakers asked Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs who has argued for a tougher U.S. posture against Beijing, why India was not siding with the West on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We recognize that India has a complicated history and relationship with Russia,” Ratner responded.
India is trying to diversify away from Russia, but it will take time, Ratner added. “From the U.S. perspective,” he said, “India is an absolutely essential partner as we think about our strategy in the Indo-Pacific.”
Niha Masih and Anant Gupta contributed to this report.
By Gerry Shih
March 17, 2022
NEW DELHI — When Russia faced international condemnation and sanctions after President Vladimir Putin launched his Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, India stayed on the diplomatic sidelines.
Now, as those economic sanctions begin to bite, Moscow is again turning to India.
India, the world’s biggest oil importer behind China and the United States, has agreed to purchase 3 million barrels of Russian oil at a heavy discount, an Indian official said Thursday. The purchase, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is relatively small given Russia’s production and Indian demand. But the volume could increase in the coming months and reinforce a growing perception that India is determined to preserve its extensive trade and military ties with Moscow, even as the United States and its allies urge governments around the world to isolate Russia.
India avoids condemning Russian invasion of Ukraine and stays aloof on Western coalition
Aside from the oil deal, the Indian government is also exploring ways to maintain trade with Russia by reviving a Cold War-era arrangement called the rupee-ruble trade, according to two other Indian officials with knowledge of the matter. The mechanism, which would be akin to a ledger of trade between the two countries, would let Indian and Russian firms do business while bypassing the need to use U.S. dollars — the predominant currency of international trade — and lowering the risk of potential U.S. sanctions
The three Indian officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. “Eighty-five percent of India’s oil comes from imports, so we always look for good options,” one of the officials said. “If that includes a good package coming from the Russian side, and there’s no bar on buying from Russia, then let’s accept that.”
The Indian officials characterized the ruble-rupee ledgers, which will probably be set up at Russian and Indian banks that are not exposed to the U.S. financial system, as a solution to help the Indian economy and its exporters rather than a way to evade potential U.S. sanctions. India trades with Iran, another country under U.S. sanctions, using a similar rial-rupee trade arrangement.
In recent weeks, India has drawn condemnation from some U.S. lawmakers after it repeatedly abstained from criticizing Russia at the United Nations. But Biden administration officials have often stopped short of criticizing an Asian giant that is seen as a crucial part of its strategy to counter China.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters she did not believe that Indian purchases of Russian oil would violate existing U.S. sanctions.
“But also think about where you want to stand when history books are written about this moment,” Psaki added, without explicitly naming India. “Support for the Russian leadership is support for an invasion that obviously is having a devastating impact.”
India’s special relationship with Russia was highlighted this month when the Russian military gave India “special input” about when and to where its stranded citizens should flee the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, while Russian military officers offered to fly Indians, specifically, out of the war zone.
As Russia’s military onslaught in Ukraine sends refugees scattering, Moscow extends a helping hand to one group: Indians
India is not the only country maintaining trade relations with Russia. Many European countries, including U.S. allies in NATO, continue to purchase Russian energy even though the United States and Britain have announced domestic bans. And India’s oil purchases probably would not amount to a game-changer for Putin’s war effort. Russia’s most important customers are Europe and China; India accounted for about 3 percent of Russia’s exports in 2021 and sources most of its oil from the Persian Gulf, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
But the two countries’ cooperation in the energy sector has deepened in recent years. In 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Putin oversaw a $13 billion deal between Rosneft and a refinery in Modi’s home state of Gujarat that represented India’s largest-ever injection of foreign investment and Russia’s largest-ever outbound deal. Indian energy companies, meanwhile, have invested $16 billion in Siberian oil fields.
As talk about the oil purchase ramped up last weekend, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak called Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to express Russian interest in “further attracting Indian investment to the Russian oil and gas sector and expanding Russian companies’ sales networks in India,” according to a statement issued by the Kremlin.
Puri said in the Indian Parliament this week that the Modi administration was working hard to keep gas prices low and that he was in talks with “all levels” of the Russian government about a deal. The Indian Oil Ministry has otherwise not publicly commented about the matter.
Many Indian industry executives and observers say it would be unfair for the West to pressure India to quit Russian oil. The European Union said this month it would wean itself off Russian energy “as soon as possible,” but large countries that depend on Russia, such as Germany, have not immediately cut imports.
“Has Europe or any other significant taker of Russian oil and gas reduced its consumption yet?” said Subhash Kumar, the former chairman of the Indian state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the country’s largest crude-oil company. If India, which is not involved in the Ukraine conflict, did not buy discounted Russian oil, there would be other takers on the market, he said.
Other prominent commentators have cautioned against proceeding with the purchases, mostly due to its optics. “From a moral standpoint, the decision to buy Russian oil and gas at a discounted rate because of the crisis in Ukraine could be questionable,” Vikram Singh Mehta, the former chief executive of Shell India and former chairman of the Brookings Institution’s India arm, told local media outlets this week.
In the coming months, India’s trade with Russia is likely to continue in another crucial realm besides oil: defense. Largely as a legacy of the Cold War — when the Soviet Union gave India everything from help setting up steel plants to blueprints for MiG fighter jets — around 85 percent of Indian weapons today came from the Soviet Union or Russia, according to a 2021 analysis by the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
Amit Cowshish, a retired Indian defense ministry official who previously oversaw India’s military acquisitions, said the armed forces would be badly crippled within a year if India could not trade with Russia.
“There’s ammunition, subassemblies, critical licenses, all of which would run out, and it wouldn’t be in the U.S. interest to see an Indo-Pacific partner be crippled or alienated by sanctions,” he said.
So far, Biden administration officials have avoided criticizing India’s continued relationship with Russia. During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, lawmakers asked Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs who has argued for a tougher U.S. posture against Beijing, why India was not siding with the West on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We recognize that India has a complicated history and relationship with Russia,” Ratner responded.
India is trying to diversify away from Russia, but it will take time, Ratner added. “From the U.S. perspective,” he said, “India is an absolutely essential partner as we think about our strategy in the Indo-Pacific.”
Niha Masih and Anant Gupta contributed to this report.
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