Special privileged strategic partnership

Special privileged strategic partnership

Indo-Russian ties key for strategic autonomy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s informal summit with newly re-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin at Sochi serves as an opportunity to reaffirm and redefine the long-standing India-Russia relationship. Over the last few years, India has expanded its bilateral and strategic relationships with countries that look askance at Moscow. On its part, Moscow has been forging closer ties with Beijing and Islamabad. The Sochi summit is an effort to put in place a communication channel at the highest level that will serve to address concerns, and identify and build on common interests and ties.

The Sochi summit comes in the background of US President Trump’s America-First isolationism combined with a trigger-happy policy on sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Such sanctions are an irritant for India’s defence cooperation with Russia and economic partnership with Iran. Russian involvement in electoral campaigns in the west along with the alleged, Kremlin-directed poisoning of Russian defectors, on top of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, have badly strained Moscow’s relations with the West, and pushed it closer to Beijing. For India, this is a cause for concern, especially along with Moscow’s overtures to Islamabad. While there is no need for India to follow the western script on Russia, it must expand its strategic engagement with the west. The Sochi summit is to help redefine the long-standing India-Russia relationship in the current geopolitical context and a common commitment to building a multipolar world order.

Building on the past, the leaders reiterated their commitment to the military, security and energy partnerships between the two countries. Looking to the future, they focused on the ways in which the two countries can work together to ensure global peace and stability, identifying the Indo-Pacific region and Afghanistan as two such opportunities. The Sochi informal summit is about taking a long-standing partnership and recasting it for the future, in which either power seeks a vital role for itself.