The reticence with which India is responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens to strain relations with western partners.

As the "world's largest democracy," India is playing a key role in efforts by the US and its allies to counterbalance Chinese power expansion in the Indo-Pacific region.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke out in favor of an end to the violence in a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday evening.

However, New Delhi has not yet condemned the attack on Ukraine.

Till Fähnders

Political correspondent for Southeast Asia.

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US President Joe Biden said in response to a journalist's question that his government was still in open "consultation" with New Delhi.

India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spoke to both his American and Russian counterparts.

According to a statement, in a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he pointed out the “importance of a strong collective response in the form of a condemnation of the Russian invasion”.

Narendra Modi, on the other hand, called for "a coordinated effort by all sides to return to the path of diplomatic negotiations and dialogue".

The differences between Russia and NATO could only be resolved through "honest and sincere dialogue."

The friendship goes back a long way

The friendly relations between India and Russia go back to the time of the Soviet Union.

Since then, both countries have been concentrating on arms policy.

India is the second largest arms importer in the world and Russia is its top supplier.

President Putin visited New Delhi just last December.

In the course of Putin's first foreign trip since the pandemic began, the two countries struck several arms deals, including the production of more than 600,000 Russian assault rifles in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

More controversial than this deal, however, is the purchase of five Russian surface-to-air missiles, which India had already completed in 2018 and for which New Delhi is threatened with American sanctions on the basis of a 2017 law.

Indian commentators expressed the expectation that India would now have to brace itself for more pressure from the West.

On the other hand, India has to fear that the attention of its western partners will be diverted from the Indo-Pacific and thus away from China to Eastern Europe.

Not least because of violent clashes on the Indo-Chinese border in the Himalayas, India is looking to get closer to the West.

On the other hand, there is a solidarity between China and Russia, which was last seen during the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing.

However, India's concern about this development does not seem to go so far as to lead to a turning away from Moscow.

On the other hand, Russia condemns the West's "Indo-Pacific strategies" and new multilateral factions such as AUKUS, the new security pact between the US, Australia and Britain, for which India is also a key partner.

However, New Delhi also sees relations with Moscow as an expression of its “strategic autonomy”.

India had already refrained from criticizing earlier Russian attacks, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The phone call between Modi and Putin was apparently primarily about New Delhi's concerns about the safety of Indian citizens in Ukraine.

For India, their safe departure and return to India is "top priority".

Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla spoke of a "very complicated and rapidly changing" situation in Ukraine.

Out of 20,000 Indian citizens, 4,000 have left the country.

Referring to the sanctions against Russia, he said New Delhi has yet to assess what impact they would have on India.