WSJ EAST IS EAST The India-Russia Relationship Is Less Than Meets the Eye As Moscow grows more dependent on China, India has no choice but to draw closer to Washington. By Sadanand Dhume Follow July 17, 2024 2:54 pm ET

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EAST IS EAST

The India-Russia Relationship Is Less Than Meets the Eye

As Moscow grows more dependent on China, India has no choice but to draw closer to Washington.

Sadanand Dhume

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Sadanand Dhume

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July 17, 2024 2:54 pm ET

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s high-profile visit to Moscow last week set off a firestorm of criticism in the West. But if you look beyond the hyperbole used to describe India-Russia relations, it becomes obvious that there’s less to the connection than meets the eye. As a weakened Russia grows more dependent on China, India has no choice but to draw closer to the U.S.

That Mr. Modi’s first visit to Russia since 2019 drew rebukes should surprise no one. By choosing Russia rather than a neighboring country for his first bilateral official visit in his third term as prime minister, Mr. Modi elevated the trip’s significance. Thanks to partially overlapping dates with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s summit in Washington, Mr. Modi’s Moscow sojourn appeared designed to undermine the Biden administration’s efforts to isolate Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

To make matters worse, images of Mr. Modi hugging Vladimir Putin, riding in a golf cart around the Russian strongman’s private residence, and accepting Russia’s highest civilian award—the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle—coincided with horrific pictures of a Russian strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv. In a meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Modi said that “when innocent children are killed, the heart bleeds and that pain is very terrifying.” But this oblique criticism, which didn’t directly blame Russia for the attack, did nothing to calm critics.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted after the hospital strike that the Modi-Putin hug was “a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts.” Former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster tweeted that it’s “time to reassess the relationship with India based on much lower expectations.”

In a rare note of public caution, U.S. Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti said that the U.S.-India relationship was “not yet deep enough” to be taken for granted. The British TV personality Piers Morgan was blunter. “Shame on you,” he tweeted, while sharing a video of Mr. Modi accepting the award from Mr. Putin.

Why would India risk upsetting its Western partners to please Moscow? The reasons are complex. As Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has pointed out, India views the Eurasian landmass as dominated by three major powers: China, India and Russia. India’s longstanding rivalry with China—including border tensions that have lasted more than four years—drives its efforts to prevent Moscow from drawing closer to Beijing.

India’s dependence on Russian arms looms large in the relationship. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that only 36% of Indian arms imports between 2019 and 2023 were from Russia, down from 76% between 2009 and 2013. But India’s large inventory of Soviet and Russian weapons means it’s still dependent on Moscow for spare parts and ammunition. India has saved about $13 billion by buying steeply discounted Russian oil since 2022, according to ICRA, a rating agency. India also sourced about a quarter of its imported fertilizer from Russia last year.

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Domestically, India hasn’t fully shed its old Cold War habit of measuring its independence by its ability to thumb its nose at America. Even today, some of India’s foreign-policy commentators view Russia in a sentimental light, as the friend that helped India stare down an unfriendly U.S. in the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the conflict that led to the birth of Bangladesh. Dealing with Russia can also seem simpler than dealing with the U.S. Mr. Putin raises no pesky questions about democratic backsliding or human rights, and the Russian media tamely takes its cues from the Kremlin.

Russophile Indian pundits hold an almost mystical view of Russia as an eternal great power. Indian foreign-policy scholar Zorawar Daulet Singh says Russia is “too proud, too independent and too militarily powerful to ever submit to China.” Mr. Jaishankar, the foreign minister, calls India’s “special and privileged strategic partnership” with Russia the “one constant in world politics.”

The trouble with these formulations is simple: They’re untrue. India may wish to prevent Russia from becoming a Chinese satellite, but New Delhi lacks the economic and technological heft to stop it. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already made Russia too dependent on China to be a reliable long-term partner for India.

As a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report noted, “Beijing has dramatically eased the pressure caused by sanctions on the Russian defense industrial base.” China has supported Russia’s war effort by supplying Moscow with semiconductors, ball bearings, machine tools and drones, among other items. China has also become the top importer of Russian oil. (India is second.) Two-way trade between China and Russia ($240 billion) dwarfs India-Russia trade ($65 billion, mostly oil). Chinese banks and electric-vehicle manufacturers have rushed to fill the void left by the West’s sanctions. Last December, about one-third of Russia’s foreign trade was settled in yuan.

Contrary to what India would like to believe, there are no constants in international politics. Working with Washington may require more effort than working with Moscow, but no country matters more than the U.S. to India’s economic and military modernization in the face of growing Chinese power. The sooner India realizes its bet on Moscow is mistaken, the better off it will be.