Between Washington and Moscow, India chooses itself

In a world splintering into rival blocs, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi today is far more than diplomatic theatre. In an era when sanctions, tariffs and coercive alignments are redrawing the global order, the optics and outcomes of this trip will resonate well beyond the India-Russia relationship.

This is Putin’s first trip to India since the Ukraine war began. For Moscow, which has endured unprecedented sanctions and isolation from the West, the visit signals something fundamental: Russia refuses to be trapped in a binary world where its only strategic anchor is China. For India, the message is equally blunt: it will not be pressured into choosing sides in a conflict that it did not create, and it will not sacrifice its own strategic autonomy at the altar of Western expectations.

Breaking Out of the China Corner

Since 2022, Western policy has had an unintended, though entirely predictable, consequence. By weaponising SWIFT, imposing a record number of sanctions and seeking to expel Russia from global markets, the US and Europe have pushed Moscow into Beijing’s strategic embrace. The irony is stark; Stalin once dismissed Mao Tse-tung as a “caveman Marxist”, yet today Russia finds itself leaning heavily on a China whose economic weight far exceeds its own. The partnership has deepened, especially in energy and defence, but it remains asymmetrical. Beijing’s dominance in trade, finance and technology risks reducing Moscow to the status of a ‘junior partner’, a role the Kremlin is acutely aware of and eager to avoid.

Putin’s trip to New Delhi must be read in that context. India, till recently the leading purchaser of discounted Russian oil, has seen its imports fall by nearly a third in the wake of stringent US sanctions.

But more importantly, India offers Russia strategic diversification — a way to balance Chinese influence without needing to confront it. For Moscow, the symbolism matters. In the middle of a grinding war and near-total Western hostility, India is one of the few major powers willing to host Putin without apology or hesitation. The optics of a warm and public welcome from the world’s largest democracy undermine the narrative of global isolation that Washington and its allies have sought to construct.

India’s Strategic Autonomy, Asserted Yet Again

India’s message to the world is equally clear — and perhaps even more consequential. New Delhi refuses to be confined by the West’s “with us or against us” binary. It has never accepted that global politics can be reduced to a moralistic scoreboard curated in Washington or Brussels. Instead, it has revived and modernised the credo of nonalignment, reframed today as ‘multi-alignment’ and maintaining simultaneously strong ties with the US, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia and West Asia, while aligning fully with none.

Putin’s visit is a sharp reminder that India’s choices are its own. And the timing could not be more deliberate.

One of the most significant outcomes of the visit is likely to be the creation of new payment mechanisms that bypass the Western-controlled financial order. India and Russia are expected to finalise channels that avoid the SWIFT system altogether, insulating bilateral trade from American and European sanctions.

Such efforts are not new, but this time they carry an unmistakable momentum. The weaponisation of the dollar during the Ukraine war — from freezing Russia’s foreign reserves to blocking banks from SWIFT — has shaken the world’s confidence in the neutrality of global finance.

Countries across the Global South are exploring alternatives, from local-currency settlements to regional payment systems.

India, which imports billions of dollars’ worth of Russian oil monthly, has already experimented with rupee settlements, though they have limitations.  The new mechanisms discussed during the visit are expected to be more durable and technologically robust. If they work, they will not just deepen India-Russia trade; they will contribute to a slow but steady erosion of the dollar’s monopoly in global finance.

A Relationship Driven by Interests, Not Nostalgia

The India-Russia relationship is often explained through history: the Soviet Union’s support on Kashmir, military cooperation since the 1970s, the memory of the 1971 veto. But this visit shows something different. The relationship endures today not because of nostalgia, but because it serves current interests on both sides.

For India, Russia remains central to defence diversification. Despite Western hopes, India cannot switch overnight from Russian-origin platforms to NATO systems without jeopardising readiness. Moreover, Russia remains a crucial supplier of discounted oil, helping India maintain energy affordability at a time of global volatility. For Russia, India represents a major market, a diplomatic partner that refuses to toe the Western line, and a counterweight to China. The relationship allows Moscow breathing space —politically, economically and strategically.

What This Means for the Global Order

Putin’s visit is ultimately a reflection of a larger transition. The post-Cold War order, built on US financial primacy and Western political norms, is no longer universally accepted. Countries are carving out their own spheres of autonomy, building parallel institutions and hedging against the uncertainties of an increasingly unpredictable superpower.

India sits at the centre of this transformation. It is deeply engaged with the West, but not dependent on it. It maintains ties with Russia but is not beholden to Moscow. It partners with China in multilateral forums even as it confronts it in the Himalayas.

This is not contradiction. It is strategy. The India-Russia strategic partnership signals something larger than the renewal of an old friendship; it tells the world that New Delhi will shape its foreign policy by its own interests, not by inherited loyalties, ideological nostalgia or external pressure. India is neither retreating into Cold War alignments nor succumbing to the new bipolarity imposed by the West and China.

Instead, it is asserting a model of autonomy that other mid-sized and emerging powers increasingly find compelling — a refusal to be drafted into somebody else’s conflict, somebody else’s sanctions regime or somebody else’s worldview.

The author is a Senior Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi; views are personal