On a cold January 13 evening, the entire Russian Embassy was lit up in red and blue, the colours of the Russian flag. Diplomats and other guests had turned up in fancy dresses for the annual masquerade party. The party was alive with music, dance and fun, but the man of the moment, Russian Ambassador Alexander M Kadakin, was missing from his usual place. last year, he was at the gate of the ballroom dressed up in sherwani and safaa. This year he was sitting quietly in anteroom. When this correspondent briefly met him to seek time for an interview, he looked frail and almost breathless. The usually talkative man that he was, Kadakin was unusually quiet. Certainly his health was failing him.
Ambassador Kadakin breathed his last on January 26, in New Delhi, his second home for almost four decade. He died of heart failure. He was 67.
With Kadakin’s death India has lost a good friend and a strong pillar of Indo-Russia relationship. He was the longest serving Russian Ambassador to India. He had first come to India in August 1971 as a probationer diplomat in the Embassy. His first posting as an ambassador to India was from 1999 to 2004, and the second one began in 2009. Kadakin often said he was “half-Indian”.
“I came here on my first posting in August 1971 as a probationer. This is my fourth posting and the second as Ambassador. In between, I had four years of interludes in Nepal and Sweden. But all through, even when I was there, I was closely connected with India. When in Russia, I was interpreting into Hindi for any summit or visit by the leader of the country and was an adviser and an expert of the delegation”, Kadakin told The Pioneer in a special interview last year.
He was a full rank Ambassador since 1994 which made him one of the senior most Ambassadors in the diplomatic circle. In all these years of his stay in India, Kadakin had learnt Hindi and often used to hum Bollywood songs of the fifties, particularly of Raj Kapoor’s films.
The most trusted man for the successive Russian Governments, Kadakin will be hard to replace. During his diplomatic career, the envoy had witnessed the glory of Soviet era and also its disintegration and creation of a new Russia. But for India, Kadakin was a symbol of continuity in the midst of cataclysmic changes his country underwent.
A strong advocate of India-Russia relationship, he would be vocal in his opinions.
“Russia is the first strategic partner of India” he would always assert as India signed similar pacts with USA and other countries. Talking about Rafale fighter jets that India is procuring from France, he categorically said that the birds can be easily shot down like mosquitoes by even Chinese made Sukhois. He always sounded assuring whenever Russia-Pakistan relationship was discussed. “Russia is working with Pakistan to prevent cross-border terror attacks on India. We have tried to influence Pakistan to check trans-border terrorism and have spent a lot of energy in this direction,” he said in an interview to this paper.
Incidentally, India-Russia celebrate 70 years of their diplomatic relationship this year. But the man who nurtured this bonding most is gone. Good bye Ambassador. You wore sar par topi lal Russi fir bhi dil tha Hindustani. Rest In Peace.