Russia Unpacks A Matryoshka Doll For Pak

Russia’s decision to hold military exercises with Pakistan in disputed PoK marks a shift in regional balance . Now, India can’t take oldest ally for granted.

- Bhavna Vij-Aurora

As Cold War era foes Pakistan and Russia started ‘Friendship 2016’, the first-ever joint military exercises between the two countries, India’s relationship status with its long-term ally, Moscow, shifted from the officially declared ‘special and privileged strategic partnership’ to ‘complicated’.

Coming days after the Uri terror attack, in which 18 Indian soldiers were killed, the only saving grace for New Delhi was that Russia agreed to cancel one leg of the fortnight-long training drill—in the heights of Rattu in Gilgit-Baltistan, part of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK)—and hold the exercises only at Cherat in Nowshera district, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The fact that Russia had issued perhaps the strongest statement following the Uri attacks, naming Pakistan, began to pale as its troops landed in Rawalpindi— that too for what was billed as joint counter-terrorism exercises.

It was all about the timing. At a time when India was making an all-out effort to isolate Pakistan in the global arena as the fountainhead of terrorism in the region, Russia went ahead with the joint exercises despite the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) having communicated India’s misgivings to Moscow. While India would have expected its oldest ally and “best friend” to take a position against Pakistan—and help India’s cause of making it an international pariah—Moscow’s unstated message to New Delhi was that the warm historic ties between the two countries did not mean anything could be taken for granted.