Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit concluded against the backdrop of geopolitical vicissitudes and geo-economic uncertainties. It was a balancing act by Prime Minister Narendra Modi: to please Putin and placate US President Donald Trump while bolstering his own image as a strong Indian leader with a 56-inch chest. To that extent, and from the perspective of pure realpolitik, Modi did his job well. There were no announcements regarding defence deals or continuation of huge quantities of oil from Russia, the pomp and pageantry of Putin’s visit notwithstanding. In fact, reports are suggesting our purchase of Russian crude may dip to a near four-year low early next year, following mounting pressure from Washington. India benefited hugely by buying cheap Russian oil, becoming the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian crude, with imports soaring to 2.1 million barrels a day in June, comprising around 45 per cent of the total imports. There was nothing in the statements made by the two leaders to suggest that high oil purchases will continue.

At the same time, the leaders’ annoyance with Trump’s unilateralism became evident in the joint statement they issued: “The Sides underline the importance of an open, inclusive, transparent and non-discriminatory multilateral trade system with the World Trade Organization at its core. Both sides have emphasised that addressing tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, removing bottlenecks in logistics, promoting connectivity, ensuring smooth payment mechanisms, finding mutually acceptable solutions for issues of insurance and reinsurance and regular interaction between the businesses of the two countries are among the key elements for timely achievement of the revised bilateral trade target of $100 billion by 2030.” For Putin, too, it was a big diplomatic victory, because the world’s largest democracy, whose ties with the United States are improving, hosted and feted him warmly. Modi broke the protocol and received Putin at the airport. BBC wrote, “The Russians loved it. ‘A cavalcade, volleys of cannons and a marble throne room,’ wrote the ultra-pro-Kremlin news site Komsomolskaya Pravda on Friday. ‘How Vladimir Putin was greeted in an Indian palace with 340 rooms.’ So much for Western efforts to turn President Putin into a pariah for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”

Modi’s warmth for Putin does not make the former look good, for it is an indisputable fact that Putin’s jingoism caused an unprovoked war against Ukraine, resulting in more than a million casualties and incalculable destruction and economic loss. And now his obstinacy and his avarice to grab more from Ukraine are prolonging the war. Worse, there is a distinct possibility of the war getting escalated and becoming nuclear. Be that as it may, Putin’s visit brought focus on some striking facts about India-Russia ties. Relations between the two nations have been warm and friendly for decades, but this has not transformed into major economic cooperation between the two. Apart from defence and space, the ties are very limited. Of the total Russian import basket, the share of India is less than two per cent. The two countries can have mutually beneficial partnerships in a variety of sectors, including energy, critical minerals, automobiles, heavy machinery, electronics, engineering goods, marine products, processed food, textiles, and pharmaceuticals. It will help both nations if economic cooperation begins in earnest and continues with all sincerity. That will be the biggest achievement of the visit.