NEW DELHI: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in New Delhi on Thursday to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, marking his first visit to India since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago.
Putin’s two-day visit comes as India and Russia mark 25 years of strategic partnership. Putin and Modi on Friday will co-chair the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit — the strategic partnership’s key platform.
The trip takes place amid intensifying US pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine, and tense relations between Washington and New Delhi as the US imposes tariffs on India and threatens sanctions over its historic ties with Moscow and its imports of Russian oil.
“India’s ties with the US have gone through a turbulent phase in recent years under the Trump administration, and Russia had been one of the factors,” Prof. Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation, told Arab News.
“Putin had not visited India for the last four years, so he’s coming after a long time, and he’s also coming at a time when negotiations are going on to end the conflict in Ukraine. So the message, I think — from both Russia and India — to the West and to the world at large, is that they want to build this partnership. And I think it is a way to emphasize how this partnership, which has always been time-tested, is also ready to adapt itself to the new realities.”
Russia is India’s largest defense supplier, accounting for an estimated 36 percent of arms imports and more than half of India’s military hardware.
While defense is expected to be one of the main issues during the Putin-Modi talks, there will be efforts to expand relations in other sectors, especially trade.
“Intensifying the trade and economic relations has been identified as a priority area by both the leaders, who had set the targets of increasing bilateral investment to $50 billion (by 2025) and bilateral trade to $100 billion (by 2030),” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement ahead of Putin’s visit.
According to government data, bilateral trade has been on the rise over the past two years, reaching $68.7 billion in 2024-25, dominated by Indian imports of Russian goods — particularly crude oil and petroleum products.
“I think both sides also know that they need to move this relationship beyond defense because it has been too defense-centric, and taking it beyond defense allows for a certain broadening of this relationship that is much required at this point,” Pant said.
“And there is also an aspect of labor mobility that is being talked about: that Russia is keen to get Indian professionals, Indian workers in Russia. So that might also be on the table.”
The Kremlin has said that Putin’s visit to India was “providing an opportunity to comprehensively discuss the extensive agenda of Russian-Indian relations as a particularly privileged strategic partnership.”
Putin is being joined on the trip by Andrei Belousov, his defense minister, and a delegation of top executives from Russian state arms and oil companies.
“There is a lot that the two countries want to do,” Pant said. “They would want to redefine the contours of this relationship based on the challenges of geopolitics of the day today.”
