India & Russia

A Special And Privileged Strategic Partnership

- Dr Yulia Boguslavskaya

India and Russia officially proclaimed the beginning of their strategic partnership in October 2000, when the corresponding declaration was signed by Russia’s newly elected president Vladimir Putin and India`s then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Both sides recognized their special responsibility in world affairs (‘by the virtue of being among the largest multiethnic multilingual and multireligious States’) and shared a common view on how the system of international relations should be organized, i.e. the conviction that it was necessary ‘to build a multipolar global structure based on sovereign equality of all states and peoples, democratic values and justice’, as it was stated in the text of the Declaration. The authors tried to clarify the concept of ‘strategic partnership’, stipulating that it would include enhanced cooperation in the following fields: political, trade and economy, defence, science and technology, culture, countering terrorism, separatism, organised crime, illegal trafficking in narcotics, etc. India-Russia strategic partnership was not a politico-military alliance and was not directed against any other state.

The signing of the Declaration on strategic partnership was considered a major initiative in bilateral relations after the end of the Cold war intended to intensify cooperation between India and Russia. The institutional mechanism of relations was designed, containing annual summits, regular bilateral political and foreign office consultations and joint intergovernmental commissions.

During the visit of Russia`s then President Dmitry Medvedev to New Delhi in December 2010 after the review of the previous decade of bilateral relations that the latter had elevated to the level of a ‘special and privileged strategic partnership’.