Russian President Vladimir Putin left India on Friday evening, concluding his first state visit to the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Putin with an embrace on the red carpet, making a rare visit to New Delhi airport to meet his counterpart upon arrival.
The warmth of that first meeting appears to have set the tone for the rest of Putin’s two-day visit. Nor is it unexpected. Friday, Modi repeated his assertion that India is “not neutral” in Russia’s war in Ukraine, but rather “on the side of peace.”
In fact, Modi’s India has gone to some effort to maintain cordial relations with the Kremlin in the face of intense US pressure to sever its dependence on Russian oil.
At the end of October, for example, India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics signed a deal with a Russian civil aviation company to build an unspecified number of Russian SJ-100 passenger jets.
According to Russian state media outlet TASS, Modi said on Friday that India’s partnership with Russia is “not limited to increasing mutual trade. We want to ensure the well-being of all humanity, and for this we need long-term solutions to existing global problems.”
“India is ready to work shoulder to shoulder with Russia on this path,” he added. “Together we can work for the benefit of the whole world.”
In August, US President Donald Trump raised tariffs on India to 50 percent to punish it for indirectly funding Russia’s war in Ukraine through its purchasing of Russian oil. India has increasingly chosen to take advantage of the falling price of Russian oil – caused by Western sanctions over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – since 2022.
“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this summer.
This approach appears to have backfired, pushing India closer to Russia. On Friday, Putin told Modi that Russia is “ready to continue uninterrupted shipments of fuel for the fast-growing Indian economy.”
“Russia is a reliable supplier of oil, gas, coal, and everything that is required for the development of India’s energy,” he said.
Modi, in turn, thanked Putin for his “unwavering commitment towards India.”
Russia and India are both members of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) forum – a loose economic and political alignment of self-proclaimed rising powers.
Nevertheless, BRICS membership is no guarantee of smooth diplomatic relations. Unlike India, South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Putin over Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine (including the abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children) in 2023.
Johannesburg has a legal obligation to arrest Putin should he ever step foot on South African territory.