MUMBAI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday makes his first visit to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, walking a fine line between maintaining a longstanding Moscow alliance while courting closer Western security ties.
Russia is a key supplier of cut-price oil and weapons to India, but its isolation from the West and growing friendship with China have impacted its time-honored partnership with New Delhi.
The United States and its Western allies have in recent years cultivated ties with India as a bulwark against Beijing and its growing influence in the Asia-Pacific, while also pressuring it to distance itself from Russia.
Modi, who was returned to power last month as leader of the world’s most populous country, last visited Russia in 2019 and hosted President Vladimir Putin in New Delhi two years later, weeks before the invasion.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has “transformed” ties with India, said Swasti Rao, from a think tank funded by India’s defense ministry, the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyzes.
“There is no decline in goodwill between India and Russia per se,” she said. “But there are challenges that have cropped up.
“These are external factors, which have been strong enough to bring in a paradigm shift in India-Russia bilateral issues,” she added.
Nandan Unnikrishnan of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation said the upcoming in-person meeting showed the two sides were looking for ways forward.
“There have been pressures on India, and there have been pressures on the India-Russia relationship,” Unnikrishnan said.
“Face-to-face interactions help in working out positions,” he added. “I’m sure Mr.Modi would like an assessment from Putin on the Ukraine war.”
New Delhi has shied away from explicit condemnation of Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and has abstained on United Nations resolutions censuring Moscow.
But Russia’s war in Ukraine has also had a human cost for India.
New Delhi said in February it was pushing Russia to release some of its citizens who had signed up for “support jobs” with the Russian military, following reports some were killed after being forced to fight in Ukraine.
Moscow’s deepening ties with Beijing have also raised concerns for New Delhi.
China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia.
India is part of the Quad grouping with the United States, Japan and Australia that positions itself against China’s growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region.
The United States and the European Union accuse China of selling components and equipment that have strengthened Russia’s military industry — allegations Beijing strenuously denies.
That leaves India with a dilemma.
Their “relationship has to evolve,” said Rao.
“Some say India should strongly engage with Russia so it doesn’t fall into the lap of China,” said Rao. “Others would say, that ship has sailed.”
New Delhi and Moscow have forged a tight relationship since the Cold War, and Russia was for a long time India’s biggest arms supplier.
But Ukraine has stretched Russia’s arms supplies, and India is eyeing other sources — including growing its own defense industry.
Russia’s share of Indian imports of weapons has shrunk considerably in recent years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
It dropped from 76 percent in 2009-13 to 36 percent in 2019-23, SIPRI said, noting France is now a close second, providing 33 percent.
“India has instead looked to Western suppliers, most notably France and the USA, and its own arms industry,” SIPRI said, adding that its arms procurement plans “seemingly do not include any Russian options.”
Rao said the Ukraine war had “accelerated” India’s push to diversify its defense purchases.
“The Ukraine war has become one of grinding attrition,” she said.
“There are genuine concerns about Russia’s export capabilities, and its focus and priorities.”
At the same time, India has also become a major buyer of discounted Russian oil, providing a much-needed export market for Moscow after it was cut off from traditional buyers in Europe.
That has dramatically reshaped energy ties, with India saving itself billions of dollars while bolstering Moscow’s war coffers.
India’s month-on-month imports of Russian crude “increased by eight percent in May, to the highest levels since July 2023,” according to commodity tracking data compiled by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“Russian crude comprised 41 percent of India’s total crude imports in May, and with new agreements in place to conduct payments in rubles, the trade might grow significantly,” the research center said.
But this has also resulted in India’s trade deficit with Russia rising to a little over $57 billion in the past financial year.
From Moscow, Modi will travel to Vienna for the first visit to the Austrian capital by an Indian leader since Indira Gandhi in 1983.

LONDON: Britain’s Labour Party headed for a landslide victory Friday in a parliamentary election, an exit poll and partial returns indicated, as voters punished the governing Conservatives after 14 years of economic and political upheaval.
As the sun rose, official results showed Labour had 326 of the 650 seats, as vote counting continued. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had already acknowledged the defeat and said he called center-left Labour’s leader Keir Starmer to congratulate him on becoming the country’s next prime minister.
Starmer will face a jaded electorate impatient for change against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric.
“Tonight people here and around the country have spoken, and they’re ready for change,” Starmer told supporters in his constituency in north London, as the official count showed he’d won his seat. “You have voted. It is now time for us to deliver.”
As thousands of electoral staff tallied millions of ballot papers at counting centers across the country, the Conservatives absorbed the shock of a historic defeat that would leave the depleted party in disarray and likely spark a contest to replace Sunak as leader.
“Nothing has gone well in the last 14 years,” said London voter James Erskine, who was optimistic for change in the hours before polls closed. “I just see this as the potential for a seismic shift, and that’s what I’m hoping for.”
While the result tallied so far suggest Britain will buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, including in France and Italy, many of those same populist undercurrents flow in the country. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has roiled the race with his party’s anti-immigrant “take our country back” sentiment and undercut support for the Conservatives, who already faced dismal prospects.
The exit poll suggested it was on course to win about 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons and the Conservatives 131.
With more than half of the official results in, the broad picture of a Labour landslide was borne out, though estimates of the final tally varied. The BBC projected that Labour would end up with 410 seats and the Conservatives with 144. Even that higher tally for the Tories would leave the party with its fewest seats in its nearly two-century history and cause disarray.
“It’s clear tonight that Britain will have a new government in the morning,” said soon-to-be former Defense Secretary Grant Shapps after losing his seat — one of a clutch of Conservative Cabinet ministers who went down to defeat.
In a sign of the volatile public mood and anger at the system, some smaller parties appeared to have done well, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and Reform UK. Farage won his race in the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, securing a seat in Parliament on his eighth attempt.
A key unknown remained whether Farage’s hard-right party could convert its success in grabbing attention into more than a handful of seats in Parliament.
Britons vote on paper ballots, marking their choice in pencil, that are then counted by hand. Final results are expected later Friday morning.
Britain has experienced a run of turbulent years — some of it of the Conservatives’ own making and some of it not — that has left many voters pessimistic about their country’s future. The UK’s exit from the European Union followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine battered the economy, while lockdown-breaching parties held by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff caused widespread anger.
Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, rocked the economy further with a package of drastic tax cuts and lasted just 49 days in office. Rising poverty and cuts to state services have led to gripes about “Broken Britain.”
Hundreds of communities were locked in tight contests in which traditional party loyalties come second to more immediate concerns about the economy, crumbling infrastructure and the National Health Service.
In Henley-on-Thames, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of London, voters like Patricia Mulcahy, who is retired, sensed the nation was looking for something different. The community, which normally votes Conservative, may change its stripes this time.
“The younger generation are far more interested in change,’’ Mulcahy said. “So, I think whatever happens in Henley, in the country, there will be a big shift. But whoever gets in, they’ve got a heck of a job ahead of them. It’s not going to be easy.”
Anand Menon, professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London, said British voters were about to see a marked change in political atmosphere from the tumultuous “politics as pantomime” of the last few years.
“I think we’re going to have to get used again to relatively stable government, with ministers staying in power for quite a long time, and with government being able to think beyond the very short term to medium-term objectives,” he said.
Labour has not set pulses racing with its pledges to get the sluggish economy growing, invest in infrastructure and make Britain a “clean energy superpower.”
But nothing really went wrong in its campaign, either. The party has won the support of large chunks of the business community and endorsements from traditionally conservative newspapers, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid, which praised Starmer for “dragging his party back to the center ground of British politics.”
The Conservatives, meanwhile, have been plagued by gaffes. The campaign got off to an inauspicious start when rain drenched Sunak as he made the announcement outside 10 Downing St. Then, Sunak went home early from commemorations in France marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
Several Conservatives close to Sunak are being investigated over suspicions they used inside information to place bets on the date of the election before it was announced.
Sunak has struggled to shake off the taint of political chaos and mismanagement that’s gathered around the Conservatives.
But for many voters, the lack of trust applies not just to the governing party, but to politicians in general.
“I don’t know who’s for me as a working person,” said Michelle Bird, a port worker in Southampton on England’s south coast who was undecided about whether to vote Labour or Conservative in the days before the elections. “I don’t know whether it’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t.”