Prime Minister Narendra Modi told President Vladimir Putin earlier this month in their first in-person meeting since the Feb. 24 invasion that “today’s era is not an era of war,” the clearest stance New Delhi has taken on the conflict.
Last week, India’s foreign minister addressed the UN Security Council, calling the Ukraine conflict’s trajectory “very concerning” and the risk of nuclear escalation “particularly concerning.”
Analysts said New Delhi’s shift, while nuanced, reflected concern about the conflict’s rising economic costs and how it would affect India.
Russia’s first troop mobilization since World War II marks a significant escalation of the conflict, which has thrown markets into turmoil and threatens a global recession.
Furthermore, India is concerned that the war is pushing Russia closer to China, which has strained relations with New Delhi, according to analysts.
India also hopes that its tougher stance will help it counter criticism from Western allies that it is too close to Moscow.
P.S. Raghavan, chairman of India’s National Security Advisory Board and a former ambassador to Russia, said that while India has always sought an end to hostilities in Ukraine, it is now taking a more public stance.
“This is countering a narrative that India and China are both doing the same thing – that China is supporting Russia and India, by sitting on the fence, is also supporting Russia,” Raghavan said.
“Our stand is very different. It is not blindly supporting Russia. We have certain cooperation lines going with Russia, which we have to keep going. Defense is the most important thing, but petroleum also. Fertilizer imports have also gone up. The point is, if we get energy cheap, we buy it.”
For decades, India and Russia have had close ties: Russia accounted for $5.51 billion of India’s $12.4 billion in arms imports between 2018 and 2021.
Since the war, Russia has risen from obscurity to become India’s third-largest oil supplier, with purchases more than doubling from the previous year due to low prices. Meanwhile, the value of India’s coal imports from Russia has increased fourfold over the same time period.
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