India's Russia strategy faces a China-centric reality

The India-Russia relationship must be understood for what it is today, not what it was 50 years ago. It is no longer the sentimental bond of the Cold War; it is an interest-based partnership that survives only as long as both sides find utility in it.

- B.R. DEEPAK

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited New Delhi from 4-5 December 2025 for the 23rd India-Russia Bilateral Summit. The optics were striking amid cold India-US relations: Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke protocol by personally receiving Putin at the airport without prior notice. At the summit, both sides repeated the familiar narrative of a “time-tested friendship” and a “special and privileged strategic partnership.” This served India well for decades, but today it is largely a comforting fiction—one that obscures how decisively Russia’s strategic orientation has shifted, perhaps irreversibly, toward China.

Majority in India still speaks of Russia through the warm haze of the past. The Soviet vetoes at the UN, the diplomatic solidarity during the 1971 war, the supply of advanced defence platforms during India’s most vulnerable decades; these memories are deeply embedded in India’s strategic psyche. Yet today, they are sentimental memories with little relevance to the tough realities of current great-power politics.

Russia, unlike India, has not remained suspended in Cold War nostalgia. Sanctions, pariah status in Europe, diplomatic isolation and battlefield attrition have compressed it into China’s strategic orbit with a force that Delhi seems reluctant to acknowledge. The numbers alone tell the story. China-Russia trade hit an unprecedented $245 billion in 2024, and the expansion was driven not by grand strategy but by necessity: Beijing has become Moscow’s default supplier of everything—from machine tools to dual-use electronics, the very components that keep Russia’s war machine running.