NEW DELHI: India and Russia are exploring ways to deepen their cooperation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday, after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in China.
Modi and Putin were both in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s leaders’ summit, where they underscored their friendly ties by traveling in one car to the meeting’s venue.
Modi said on social media they had an “excellent meeting” and discussed “ways to deepen bilateral cooperation in all sectors,” including trade, space, and security.
“We exchanged views on regional and global developments, including the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine. Our Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership remains a vital pillar of regional and global stability,” he wrote on X.
In a video from the meeting, he said that “even in difficult times, India and Russia have walked shoulder to shoulder” and that their close relationship is important not only for the two countries, “but also for global peace, stability, and prosperity.”
He also invited Putin to visit New Delhi in December to take part in the India-Russia Annual Summit, which is a key a platform of the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.
The meeting with Russia’s leader followed Modi’s one-on-one with Chinese President Xi Jinping a day earlier, marking a thaw in relations between the Asian giants that were locked in a years-long standoff over their disputed Himalayan border.
The breakthrough with China and plans of increased cooperation with Russia form the backdrop to India’s souring relations with its main partner, the US, after the Donald Trump administration imposed a 50 percent duty on Indian goods as punishment for buying Russian oil.
The White House last month alleged that New Delhi’s oil purchases were indirectly helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.
This week’s meetings with Xi and Putin show efforts to recalibrate India’s foreign policy, which over the past few years was strongly US-oriented.
“This is important because this is a kind of departure from the policy that we have been pursuing with the US for the last 20 years,” Prof. Rajan Kumar from the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Arab News.
Modi’s engagements at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting sent a “clear and loud message” to the US and other Western powers that India would pursue a policy of multi-alignment, he said.
“It will have its ties with the US, but also it will not disrupt its ties with Russia, China, and other countries just because the US would like India to behave in a certain way.”
