The decades-tested and trusted relationship between India and Russia is viewed today as shaking due to the changing geopolitical environment at regional level and beyond between Kremlin and Washington on the one hand and the USA and China on the other. It’s a big brain game among super and big powers of the world for which countries like India, Pakistan, Japan, Australia, Afghanistan, and others of south Asia and Southeast Asia are working as fillers or balancers. While these countries are conscious enough of their security and development needs, at the same time they are equally conscious of the need for peace in the region.
Presently, the nations of South Asia and others are worried about the total withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan and after the power vacuum that it will create. In this context, there are so many powers, big and small, active to play their role but only two major groups are involved in the task. One is led by the USA which wants to keep India, Japan, and Australia along with other like-minded countries on its side, and it is supportive of the existing power set to take charge of the country. The leader of the second group is China which desires to continue the peace talks with the help of Pakistan and Russia, and the main purpose of this camp is to not involve New Delhi anywhere in the whole process. It is supportive of the Taliban who have been fighting for decades against the forces of the USA and the Afghanistan government.
However, any effort for peace in Afghanistan must satisfy the core players: the USA, which has to withdraw, the Afghan government and the Taliban who are responsible for implementing the terms of the agreement signed for establishing peace and making power arrangements in the post-withdrawal phase and thereafter. Thus, despite some understandings with China to control the USA, the Russian Federation does not like to overlook its traditional and time-tested friendship with New Delhi, also to check Beijing in the long run, as if the time of multi-polar world has arrived, or is in the pipeline.
India and Russia have a seven-decade history of tested faithful relations in all spheres, that has now transformed into a strategic partnership in last two decades or especially with the rise of Russia as a potential power in post-Cold War era, However, it faces today some strains due to divergence of goals on account of geopolitical and geo-economic shifts at the regional and global levels, fueled by bilateral and international factors. The least negative effects of these events are expected, however, keeping in view the track records of their past sound relations based on mutual trust and understandings on issues of national interest, security and all-round development.
As the period from the mid-1940s and thereafter was famous for rivalry between the two superpowers of the time, and when India refused to join the US camp, the latter made Pakistan its ally in Asia and began to extend all kinds of help to Islamabad and Pakistan became a member of SEATO and CENTO. In response, the Kremlin began supporting Third World countries and the Non-aligned Movement of which India was leader. In that context, the two countries made a high-level exchange when India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Moscow in June 1955 and a return visit was paid by CPSA First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev the same year. While in India he supported Indian sovereignty and on Kashmir, although India’s growing relations with it had cast a negative effect. Kremlin remained neutral in the border dispute as well as during the India-China war of 1962.
In a critical situation during the Indo-Pak war of 1965 and at the height of Bangladesh crisis India faced, the USSR supported India and also supplied required materials to defend India against US and Chinese help to Pakistan. The strong spirit and good understanding remained intact under the Janata Party’s rule in India followed by the return of Mrs. Gandhi and thereafter. After the disintegration of the he USSR, relations remained intimate as earlier, and they signed a series of agreements and treaties to strengthen relations in each field, although initially for years Russia looked to the West for help and assistance they promised earlier and India too became busy in accommodating its economic policies as required by globalization, but despite heavy engagements at national level they both were trying to adjust in the new world order dominated by the supremacy of the USA.
In the changed global atmosphere, they both signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 1993 and extended people-to-people in successive years. Their relations found a new height with the 2000 visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin. There were some signs of the fading of the old trusted and smooth relationship due to bilateral, regional and global factors.
With the passing of time, India’s understanding with the USA, emerging differences between the USA and China, and Beijing’s growing intimacy with the Russian Federation against the USA have, to a large extent, affected India- Russia relations in the last two decades, but more especially in the recent past few years.
It is a new challenge for policymakers of New Delhi and the Kremlin to keep a balance and maintain at least working relations in this hour of crisis. Although neither Russia nor India is willing to let their relations down in any sphere, they are bound to keep the old tempo and fairness/ intimacy in behaviour in abeyance. The growing understandings with the USA in the last two decades have also reached a point of no return and this has made relations uneasy with both Russia and China as well. In the present situation both India and Russia are trying their level best to keep the earlier relations intact in the changed regional and global scenarios.
