Why India Won’t Break Up With Russia

The closeness of these two isn't just for the cameras.

India and Russia's relationship goes back decades.

And even after Russia started a war in Ukraine New Delhi is reluctant to break up with Moscow.

There was considerable strain on India after the Ukraine war for buying Russian crude.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ramping up attacks on India, accusing the country of profiteering off Russian oil.

In a way, the triangle between India, Russia and America seems to be history repeating itself.

I think all three countries recognize that they have sort of overlapping interests and sometimes competing interests.

India’s been juggling its relationship between Moscow and Washington since its independence.

But these days, it's the US that's the more important trading partner.

This is India's trade with Russia.

And this is its trade with the US.

Unfortunately for India, the US president can be unpredictable.

This mercurial Trump administration has made the US a lot less dependable, The way the current administration has dealt with the relationship, it's left a very sour taste.

Russia and India had a very special, privileged relationship that has withstood the test of difficult times.

Russia-India relationship is more an emotion and less a transaction.

Their minds meet. Their hearts meet.

That's very important.

The world's most populous country must walk a tightrope.

But can it stay close to both Russia and the US?

I remember growing up there was this magazine called Misha.

And it carried stories of Russia's space program.

It was propaganda, for sure, but it was gorgeous propaganda.

In India, the legacy of the Soviet Union is seen more positively than some might expect.

Following India's independence in 1947, it was looking for help to industrialize.

When India has wanted expertise, America has only offered financial aid and not the willingness to transfer technology to India.

The Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia has been willing to do that.

The towering symbol of the India- Soviet friendship was the Bhilai steel plant.

The Russians gave the technical blueprint.

When Khrushchev came to India and addressed the Indian Parliament in 1960, he actually said that made the Indo-Soviet friendship be as strong as the metal coming out from the Bhilai factory.

It's not that the US didn't want India as a partner at the start of the Cold War.

But India is committed to not formally aligning itself with any ally.

It generally refuses to pick sides.

While the US forged a military alliance with arch rival Pakistan.

All this pushed New Delhi closer to Moscow.

the Pakistan angle is a constant in the India-Soviet Union and India-Russia relationship.

And primarily because we see United States at varying points taking sides with Pakistan, which is a red line for the Indian administration.

In contrast, the Soviet Union was willing to share more than just engineering know-how.

Again, going back to the 1950s, a newly independent India did not want aid in the form of weapons from any great superpower.

It would either purchase weapons or the production licenses to manufacture weapons locally.

Soviet Union has no problem if India were to license produce a certain number of fighter jets, a certain number of tanks.

Those military ties endure to today.

Russia remains India's largest defense supplier.

You look at India's fighter fleet, almost all of it is Russian.

India will have to depend on Russia for spares, for tech to maintain these.

India requires really a large military to reflect its increased regional status.

Despite all of the difficulties associated with sanctions and the war in Ukraine, India is still Russia's biggest market for weaponry.

And it still supplies something like, 48% or half of India's military needs.

Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine made being friends with Moscow much harder.

India has repeatedly called for peace but stopped short of condemning the invasion.

So before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, India was practically not taking any Russian oil at all.

India got the majority of its oil from the Middle East. But that's changed.

Look how imports from Russia have grown.

Today, India, at this point is Russia's largest client for seaborne oil.

One reason for this was the price cap put on Russian oil exports.

cap was designed to punish Russia while keeping crude prices stable.

There was a discount on Russian oil and the price of oil became an arbitrage game.

Russian crude reached nearly 56% of India's total imports in July 2026.

That's around $6.4 billion worth of Russian oil a month.

Vital cash for the Kremlin.

At first, buying Russian oil wasn't a problem.

Because it wasn't sanctioned.

The Biden administration had encouraged India to buy Russian oil, as long as it was under the price cap in order to keep global markets balanced.

But that changed under President Donald Trump.

The United States has been lambasting New Delhi for its purchases of Russian oil.

They used tariffs, and tariffs upon tariffs.

They used a public campaign, and the prospect of this trade deal to really try and push India to cut back.

Another dent in the relationship came that same year.

Following a short conflict in 2025 between India and Pakistan, Trump insisted he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for helping reach a ceasefire.

India rejected Trump's claims. And all of this has hurt public opinion of the US in India.

A Pew survey recently said that 36% of Indians view Russia as India's top ally.

Versus just 16% who see America's India's top ally.

US forces have launched airstrikes on an Iranian military site, signaling how fragile hopes have become for a deal.

Now, the US, Israel war with Iran flips the tables again.

The US backed off its tough talk.

There are refresh waivers for countries around the world to buy Russian oil.

And India has certainly taken advantage of that.

Oil remains a vital connection.

But Russia is also key to India's energy diversification.

India has been trying to diversify its energy basket to clean and green energy on one hand and to nuclear, which is a very powerful source of clean energy.

The flagship project is Kudankulam, which is a nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu in the very south of India.

It's been very, very expensive and delayed as a result of the war in Ukraine.

But it is advancing and it is a very important piece of India's nuclear puzzle.

But India must weigh its friendship with Russia against economic realities that can't be ignored.

The US is far and away India's largest export market.

So they can't afford to alienate the US.

They certainly want to improve trade terms with the US.

The Indian diaspora in the US is more than 5 million strong, making it one of the largest immigrant communities in the country.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian students study in the US.

They develop careers there.

Silicon Valley has got a great amount of Indian leaders.

The financial sector in America has got a lot of Indians leading the pack.

Then there's India's other neighbor.

China is really important piece when we think about the Russia India relationship, we tend to think about it as India, Russia, the US.

It's that triangle.

But actually an equally important triangle is Russia, India, China.

Russia's increasing dependance on China, that's not comfortable for India.

Russia is often the sort of man in the middle and doesn't have really the same reach or potential as the other two, which are just giant economies and giant populations in comparison to Russia.

India's long established strategy of non-alignment continues.

And despite Russia's damaged economy and pariah status, it remains a critical partner.

We might see a rebalancing.

But it's difficult to see a complete turn away from Russia, I would always go back to the comments made by the Foreign Minister Jaishankar, who referred to this as the one constant in geopolitics.

India has changed, Russia has changed, but their relationship has not.

The relationship between India and Russia I would characterize it today as a marriage of convenience.

Perhaps the love of the 1950s no longer is there, but there still is a certain warmth that definitely is the familiarity.

They know whom they are dealing with.