7 December 2025, NIICE Commentary 12017
E. V. A. Dissanayake
The December 2025 state visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to New Delhi crystallized a pattern of intensifying Russia–India engagement: high-level diplomacy, new energy and industrial agreements, and sustained defence cooperation. President Vladimir Putin’s Visit to India unfolded at a moment of heightened geopolitical tensions and shifting great-power alignments, amid the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict and at a time when India's ties with the US are seeing tensions due to Russian energy.
This article explores the formal agenda and public significance of the visit; the underlying strategic, economic, and diplomatic motivations; the messaging around the Russia–Ukraine war; and the broader implications for global order, regional security architecture, and India’s foreign policy calculus.
Background
The trip, occurring from December 4–5, coincided with the 23rd annual summit between the two nations and comes at a moment of heightened global scrutiny. For Russia, still grappling with Western sanctions and diplomatic isolation, the visit represented a bid to re-normalize international engagements. For India, the visit provided an opportunity to recalibrate its foreign policy under pressure, including energy security and sanctions, while reaffirming its historical “special and privileged strategic partnership” with Moscow.
While the war has significantly transformed Russia’s relations with the West, reshaping global supply chains, energy markets, and diplomatic partnerships, its relations with the Global South, especially with the Indian sub-continent, have strengthened. For India, whose ties with Russia rest on decades of strategic convergence, defence cooperation, and political trust, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has introduced new complexities in managing its foreign policy priorities. Simultaneously, India’s relations with the United States—central to its Indo-Pacific strategy—have experienced strains linked to divergent positions on Russia, human rights rhetoric, and debates surrounding energy purchases and sanctions. Against this backdrop, Putin’s visit carries significance beyond bilateral diplomacy: it reflects India’s continued pursuit of strategic autonomy, its desire to preserve critical defence and energy ties with Moscow, and its effort to maintain equilibrium between competing major powers. This introduction frames the article’s analysis of how the visit shapes India–Russia relations, influences India–US ties, and contributes to broader geopolitical recalibrations.
Historical Context of India–Russia Relations
India–Russia relations draw their strength from a deeply entrenched partnership that predates contemporary geopolitical trends. Since the Cold War, Moscow has been one of New Delhi’s most dependable strategic partners, providing political support, defence capabilities, and technological cooperation at moments when Western powers were less forthcoming. The 1971 Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation established a legacy of strategic trust that has continued into the post-Soviet era. Today, more than 60 percent of India’s military platforms still originate from Russia, underscoring a long-term defence interdependence that shapes New Delhi’s security calculations. This cooperation has expanded beyond defence to include nuclear energy, hydrocarbons, space collaboration, and joint industrial production. Russia has also consistently supported India on sensitive issues such as Kashmir and at multilateral forums, including the UN Security Council. This historical depth forms the backdrop against which India assesses the implications of the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Rather than viewing Moscow solely through the prism of the current crisis, New Delhi sees Russia as an enduring strategic pillar, making continuity a key feature of its approach.
Strategic Motivations behind Putin’s Visit
President Putin’s visit to India reflects several strategic motivations rooted in Russia’s shifting geopolitical circumstances and its need to consolidate reliable partnerships amid the Ukraine conflict. As Western sanctions continue to restrict Russia’s access to global markets, finance, and technology, Moscow has intensified its engagement with Asian partners to mitigate isolation and secure long-term economic corridors. India, in particular, has emerged as one of Russia’s most critical energy markets, purchasing substantial volumes of discounted crude oil throughout the conflict—a move that has provided Moscow with revenue stability despite sanctions pressure. Strengthening this energy cooperation remained a core objective of Putin’s visit.
Defence ties are another fundamental driver. Russia remains India’s most significant supplier of legacy platforms, advanced systems such as the S-400, and joint projects like the BrahMos missile, making stability in the relationship strategically vital. With Russia seeking to maintain relevance in the Indo-Pacific and retain India as a long-term defence partner, high-level political engagement helps counterbalance China’s growing dominance in Russia’s external partnerships.
Beyond material interests, the visit serves symbolic and diplomatic purposes. By travelling to New Delhi during a period of intense scrutiny from the West, Putin signalled that Russia continues to wield influence in key non-Western states and retains options beyond its deepening alignment with Beijing. For Moscow, sustaining strong ties with India reinforces the narrative of a multipolar world and enhances its leverage in Eurasian affairs. Overall, the visit demonstrates Russia’s strategic intent to secure markets, preserve defence cooperation, and reaffirm partnerships that reinforce its geopolitical standing amid an ongoing conflict.
India’s Calculus: Balancing Strategic Autonomy
For India, President Putin’s visit comes at a delicate geopolitical juncture, reinforcing New Delhi’s long-standing reliance on strategic autonomy as the guiding principle of its foreign policy. India’s approach is shaped by the need to preserve critical partnerships while avoiding alignment with any single power bloc—a strategy rooted in its historical non-alignment and contemporary multi-alignment doctrine. Russia remains indispensable to this balancing act. Given that a substantial portion of India’s defence inventory, including high-end platforms, originates from Russia, maintaining stable ties is essential for military readiness and long-term procurement planning. Moreover, Russia provides India with diplomatic support on sensitive regional issues, including at the UN Security Council, reinforcing the value of the partnership.
Economically, the surge in discounted Russian oil imports since the onset of the Ukraine conflict has strengthened India’s energy security and provided crucial fiscal flexibility. Preserving access to this energy corridor is a key motivation behind India’s refusal to join Western sanctions and its consistent advocacy for dialogue rather than condemnation at multilateral forums. At the same time, India must calibrate its actions to avoid jeopardizing its rapidly evolving relationship with the United States, especially in the Indo-Pacific, where Washington is a vital partner in counterbalancing China.
Putin’s visit, therefore, offered New Delhi an opportunity to reaffirm its independent foreign policy posture, signal continuity in its Russia ties, and negotiate from a position of equilibrium between competing global powers. For India, the ultimate goal is not to choose sides but to maximize strategic space in a rapidly fragmenting international order.
Implications for India–US Relations
President Putin’s visit to India inevitably reverberates through the India–US relationship, which has experienced periodic strains in recent years. Washington views New Delhi as a critical partner in the Indo-Pacific, yet India’s continued engagement with Russia—particularly its large-scale purchases of discounted oil and its refusal to condemn Moscow at the UN—has generated persistent concerns among U.S. policymakers. The U.S. has also been uneasy about India’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defence system, raising the spectre of potential CAATSA-related sanctions, even as successive administrations have sought to avoid punitive measures that might undermine broader strategic cooperation.
Putin’s visit could amplify these tensions by reinforcing perceptions in Washington that India remains overly reliant on Russia for defence and energy needs. This comes at a time when the U.S. has been encouraging India to diversify its military procurement and deepen technological collaboration through frameworks such as the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET). Divergences over human rights rhetoric and democratic backsliding have added additional layers of friction between the two partners.
Nevertheless, India has demonstrated an ability to compartmentalize its major-power relationships. While maintaining robust cooperation with the U.S. on China, maritime security, and emerging technologies, New Delhi continues to preserve its strategic ties with Moscow. Thus, the implications of the visit for India–US relations are nuanced: it challenges U.S. expectations but falls short of altering the fundamental trajectory of the partnership.
Broader Geopolitical Significance
Beyond the bilateral dimensions, President Putin’s visit to India carries broader geopolitical implications, particularly within the shifting dynamics of Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific. The meeting subtly signals that India and Russia both seek to maintain diversified strategic options despite their deepening—but asymmetrical—relations with China. For India, nurturing its partnership with Russia serves as a reminder to Beijing that New Delhi retains access to diplomatic and defence channels beyond the Western sphere, even as border tensions persist (Pant & Saran, 2022). For Russia, engaging India helps prevent excessive dependence on China and reinforces its claim to being an autonomous pole in a multipolar world.
In the Global South, the visit resonates with India’s advocacy for multipolarity and its leadership aspirations among non-Western states seeking alternatives to U.S.–China bipolarity. It also underscores a widening geopolitical divergence between Western and non-Western approaches to the Ukraine conflict, with many Asian and African states prioritizing strategic autonomy and economic interests over ideological alignments.
Overall, the visit illustrates how middle and major powers are recalibrating their strategies within a fragmented international system. India and Russia’s engagement thus contributes to evolving regional architectures that extend beyond the binaries of the Ukraine war.
Conclusion
President Putin’s visit to India, set against the backdrop of the Russia–Ukraine conflict and strains in India–US relations, highlights the resilience and complexity of India’s strategic positioning. The visit reaffirmed the enduring significance of India–Russia ties in defence, energy, and diplomacy, while illustrating New Delhi’s continued commitment to strategic autonomy. Although the engagement may generate unease in Washington, it is unlikely to fundamentally alter India–US cooperation, which rests on shared Indo-Pacific interests. Ultimately, the visit underscores India’s capacity to navigate competing great-power expectations and shape its foreign policy around pragmatic national interests within an increasingly multipolar international order.
E. V. A. Dissanayake is an Independent Researcher from Sri Lanka. She is a Robert Bosche Stiftung Fellow and a Visiting Scholar of Columbia University, USA.
