What was Putin's visit to India really about?

NEW DELHI (UNI). As Russian President Vladimir Putin flew out of Delhi for the colder climes of Moscow, a stocktaking of what really happened behind the glamour and glitz of the high-profile visit reveals that there was as much substance as there were hopes pinned on this one visit in the midst of a European war and efforts to strike a peace bargain.

- JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY

The trip to India, after a four-year gap, was not driven by a single motive. It was, instead, a calibrated mix of geopolitical signalling, strategic hedging, and hard economic bargaining, all wrapped in the optics of a longstanding personal equation with New Delhi.

Putin knew well that the optics of his trip to India would ripple across Western capitals. A sanctioned, diplomatically isolated leader being warmly received by a Quad member and a US strategic partner sends a message, but it is far more subtle than simple defiance.

As the Kremlin negotiates a peace deal in Ukraine, it also needed to show that Russia is not diplomatically quarantined, and that major non-Western powers still see value in engaging with it. This, in turn, reinforces Russia's narrative of a multipolar world.

For India, which has refused to criticise Russia for the war in Ukraine while offering to “contribute” to the peace effort, there is a significant subtext emerging from the visit: New Delhi is positioning itself as the central swing power that refuses to be folded into any particular camp. However, all the subtle signalling emanating from the Kremlin and Raisina Hill was secondary, a byproduct, not the primary objective.

For Putin, the trip was also about re-anchoring Russia in India’s defence market. India remains Russia’s largest defence customer, but its market share has been eroding for a decade.

The trip, with its offers to sell more S-400 missiles, which proved successful in India’s last skirmish with Pakistan, and Su-35 fighter jets to replace the Indian Air Force’s ageing fleet, as well as the unprecedented offer for joint production and technology transfer for Russia's Su-57 stealth fighter, could lure India to remain a major anchor for the Russian military-industrial complex.