Putin’s India visit tests New Delhi’s US-Russia balancing act

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit India this week for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, a rare trip that underscores the countries’ defence and energy ties as New Delhi seeks to finalise a trade deal with Washington. 

The Russian leader is eager to show that Moscow still has strong relationships that matter beyond the West – and large markets it can trade with.

For India, whose close economic and political ties with Russia date back to the Soviet period, the visit comes as sanctions and US pressure curb an energy trade that has been expedient for its economy and vital for Russia.

It is also an opportunity to demonstrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s continued ability to chart out an independent geopolitical path.

“As the US under Trump has become more isolationist and transactional, and relations with China remain poor, India is ensuring that its ties with middle powers like Russia – or Japan, UAE and the EU – are deepened,” said Mr Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, head of Eurasia Group’s South Asia practice.

“It helps India that President Trump has already ended Putin’s pariah status by holding his Alaska Summit.”

Both sides have formally framed the visit around trade, though deeper questions remain over energy and defence – two areas that have put India in the crosshairs of Mr Trump.

The US leader has

doubled India’s tariffs to 50 per cent

to punish the country for buying oil from Russia, and has pressured New Delhi to buy more American arms. Mr Modi’s government is in talks with the Trump administration over trade and close to a deal – a goal that could prove more distant after a show of closer India-Russia ties. 

Mr Putin’s visit comes against the backdrop of his talks on Dec 2 with US envoy Steve Witkoff and Mr Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, on a new peace plan that Washington is pushing hard for Russia and Ukraine to accept.

India has maintained a cautious position in relation to the war in Ukraine, calling for a halt to fighting, while also refusing to damage its relationship with Moscow. Mr Modi hugged Mr Putin and called him “my friend” in his first visit to Moscow in five years in 2024, just a day after a deadly Russian missile strike on the main children’s hospital in Kyiv provoked international outrage. 

The European ambassadors of Germany, France and Britain in New Delhi wrote a joint op-ed in the Times of India on Dec 1, criticising Russia’s war against Ukraine, and signalling – albeit indirectly – India’s long-held view that the conflict should be resolved through negotiations.

On the eve of his visit, Mr Putin hailed his country’s ties with India and China, and pledged to boost relations to a “qualitatively new level”. He told a business forum in Moscow on Dec 2 he will discuss trade with Mr Modi, including “increasing the import of Indian goods into our market”.

India is keen to discuss with Russia the purchase of Su-57 fighter jets and the advanced missile defence shield S-500.

Russia remains its largest supplier of military hardware, even after a significant drop in purchases in recent years, as New Delhi turns more frequently to the US and European countries. The Modi government has indicated it will continue to take both US and Russian equipment.

India has more than 200 Russian fighter jets and several batteries of the earlier generation of air-defence systems, used during a four-day clash with Pakistan in May – a flare-up that has only added to New Delhi’s urgency. India’s military is also short on advanced aircraft.

Any sale would have to overcome complications thrown up by sanctions and Russia’s own wartime demand.

Another major concern for the two leaders will be the oil trade, a key source of revenue for the Kremlin. India will seek to balance its need for inexpensive crude, given the weight of its import bill, with a desire to avoid punitive US tariffs and sanctions. 

Historically, it has not been a significant importer of Russian oil, depending more heavily on the Middle East. That changed in 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine and a price cap imposed by the Group of Seven nations that aimed to limit the Kremlin’s oil revenues.

The surge in purchases – to the point where India became the largest buyer of seaborne Russian crude – was tacitly supported by a Biden administration eager to keep oil flowing, and prices down. 

Mr Trump turned that into a pressure campaign in 2025, berating India and its refiners and eventually sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil producers, Rosneft and Lukoil, in an effort to push Mr Putin to the negotiating table.

That has dramatically reduced Russian shipments, even in the face of steep discounts. Exporters are already offering the nation’s flagship Urals crude to India with a discount of as much as US$7 (S$9) a barrel to Brent benchmark on a delivered basis, for cargoes loading in December and arriving in January 2026. That brings the price for India to the lowest in at least two years.

That is a loss Mr Putin will almost certainly seek to reverse. The delegation arriving on Dec 4 is expected to include senior oil industry executives, along with defence and other officials.

Both leaders will use the visit to attempt to expand their trade beyond Russian oil and weapons, addressing a business forum on Dec 5 to woo private companies. 

India is seeking to gain more access to the Russian market for its exporters hit by US tariffs, with a likely agreement announced on the shipment of marine products and agricultural goods, an official from India’s Ministry of External Affairs told reporters in a background briefing on Dec 2.

The two sides are expected to agree on a pact to facilitate Indian workers travelling to Russia for jobs, the official added.  

Russia, locked out from markets like Europe, is on the lookout for alternatives.

“The idea is simple – to get more goods from India and pay for them with the rupees that Russia earns by selling India its oil,” said Dr Tatiana Shaumyan, head of the Center for Indian Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow.

Mr Putin and Mr Modi are expected to discuss raising bilateral trade from the current US$68 billion to US$100 billion by 2030, and improve systems to settle transactions in their own currencies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told local media on Dec 2.

For India, breaking into the Russian market will not be easy, though. Local and Chinese goods are widely available and competitively priced, leaving Indian exporters with a “quite small” list of viable products, said Dr Alexey Kupriyanov, head of the Center of the Indo-Pacific Region at the state-run IMEMO institute in Moscow. BLOOMBERG