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There’s a sense of foreboding in New Delhi as Xi Jinping prepares to secure a third five-year term as China’s president. It’s expected that Xi’s appointment will be confirmed by the 20th congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which begins in Beijing on 16 October.

Under Xi, China has, with relentless pugnacity, challenged India’s sovereignty by encroaching on its territorial waters and redrawing the Line of Actual Control, the 3,488-kilometre Himalayan frontier that divides the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Xi queered the pitch further by rebuffing India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had been looking forward to a separate meeting with him at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan. Xi pointedly did not acknowledge Modi even when the Indian leader walked up to him at the photoshoot of the organisation’s leadership.

Modi has hitherto been unable to raise with Xi the issue of Chinese troops on Indian territory since their violent cross-border clash with Indian soldiers on 5 May 2020. Chinese troops also slew 20 Indian soldiers in the area on 15 June 2020, the first deadly skirmish since 1967, when a border confrontation led to the deaths of 80 Indian and 400 Chinese soldiers. It is widely believed that a direct discussion would have helped defuse the tensions.

This has raised concern about an apparent communication gap between the two leaders. Modi has previously claimed a close rapport with Xi, built up over his nine visits to China, five as prime minister and four previously as chief minister of Gujarat state. He also hosted the Chinese president in India three times between 2014 and 2019.

Moreover, even as corps commander-level talks on disengagement and de-escalation continue between the two countries, Modi has avoided identifying China as the aggressor, asserting instead, ‘No intruder is present inside India’s borders, nor is any post under anyone’s custody.’

India has demonstrably been pushed onto the back foot as more than 50,000 People’s Liberation Army troops continue to occupy 1,000 square kilometres of the eastern sector of India’s border union territory of Ladakh.

While an intransigent China has not heeded India’s call for reinstatement of all the captured territories, it consented to a localised disengagement by Indian and Chinese frontline troops being carried out last week from Patrolling Point 15 in Gogra-Hot Springs, as per the agreement reached at the 16th round of talks in July.

A similar breakthrough had been reached once before, at the 9th round of talks in January 2021, which led to disengagement at the south and north banks of the Pangong Tso lake.

While China yielded some ground, India appears bereft of any comprehensive strategy to deal with the situation. New Delhi’s anxiety about pursuing a negotiated conciliation has been prompted by the vast disparities between their forces. Military retaliation is not an option for India, as it strives to prevent the hostility spiralling into an all-out war it can ill-afford.

Though India has affirmed that only complete disengagement can lead to de-escalation of hostilities, it hailed the limited withdrawals as major concessions it extracted from Beijing. However, it has ceded territory to China by agreeing to the pullbacks from areas well within its borders and to the creation of ‘buffer zones’ inside its territory.

It also remains to be seen how long this disengagement will hold. PLA troops recrossed the LAC following the 2021 disengagement to reoccupy positions on the Kailash Range that they had vacated, and others moved in to points near the Pangong Tso and Galwan river.

A menacing China has opened additional fronts along India’s border states of Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim. Beijing has all along claimed the 83,743square kilometre Arunachal as part of southern Tibet. In 2018 its state-run English-language daily Global Times asserted: ‘Although China recognised India’s annexation of [7,096 square kilometres] Sikkim in 2003, it can readjust its stance on the matter.’

The PLA has also brought in medium-lift helicopters, towed artillery, light tanks, infantry combat vehicles, rocket launchers and drones with thermal imaging, and created extensive support infrastructure with fortifications and encampments, all within striking distance of Indian deployments. It has also laid fibre-optic cables to secure lines of communication between forward troops and bases in the rear.

China’s push against India doesn’t appear merely tactical, but has a strategic intent with long-term objectives. These moves are not directed by exuberant commanders on the ground, but by the topmost leadership, the Central Military Commission, chaired by Xi.

Despite three previous border agreements, Beijing disputes most of its territorial demarcations with India. In 2017, it had a 73-day standoff with India at the India–China–Bhutan tri-junction of Doklam, the most critical in decades.

India has reason to fear a progressive deterioration in its security environment, with the CCP congress expected to cement Xi’s place as the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Xi made this possible when in 2018 he rescinded the two-term limit for the presidency. He has served as CCP general secretary and chair of the Central Military Commission since 2012 and has been president since 2013.

Recently in New Delhi, Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar observed: ‘It is said that the prerequisite for an Asian Century is an India and China coming together.’

Conversely, he said, the inability of these nations to work together will undermine that goal.

South Asian social media is now a contested space. Multiple politically motivated actors deploy inauthentic accounts to shape the discourse on the region’s historical and modern geopolitical disputes.

One of the region’s longest running disputes is over Kashmir. India and Pakistan have fought two wars and multiple smaller armed conflicts over the region. Multiple attempts at peace negotiations haven’t yielded results. Today, Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan, but each state controls parts of the region, and China also controls territory ceded by Pakistan but claimed by India as part of Kashmir.

Present-day Kashmir remains highly militarised and experiences extraordinary levels of state control. In 2019, the region went through a fresh round of tensions, starting from the death of 40 Indian soldiers in an attack linked to a Pakistan-based terrorist group, which led to a cross-border strike by India and skirmishes between the Indian and Pakistani air forces. In August 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered on his party’s manifesto by removing the region’s constitutional privileges, which gave Kashmir a high degree of autonomy and divided the state into two federally controlled territories. That was followed by an internet and media blackout, an increased Indian Army presence and a strongly enforced ban on public gatherings.

These historical conflicts and the resulting domestic political motivations have now polluted the region’s social media and political discourse with coordinated activity aimed at hijacking or disrupting genuine debate, discussion and movement.

Since tensions flared between India and Pakistan in 2019, multiple suspicious and coordinated accounts have sought to shape narratives relating to Kashmir on social media platforms. Examples include two hashtags, #KashmirWithModi and #KashmirWelcomesChange, which were posted by legitimate Twitter users before being used by suspicious accounts to disseminate misleading content showing local Kashmiris reacting favourable to the Indian government. Around the same time, Twitter accounts—presumed to have originated from Pakistan—also amplified two competing hashtags, #IndiaUsingClusterBombs and #KashmirUnderThreat.

Meta has also identified coordinated inauthentic behaviour believed to have originated in India and Pakistan in April 2019, and has removed four networks from its Facebook platform.

Earlier this month, ASPI received a dataset from Twitter of 1,198 accounts that amplified content favourable to the Indian government and were suspended for breaching Twitter’s platform manipulation and spam policies. Activities that might constitute breaches include artificially amplifying or suppressing information, mass-registering accounts, and conducting coordinated operations to disrupt conversations. These behavioural indicators were used by Twitter to delineate between legitimate users and coordinated, well-resourced and politically motivated actors.

In this dataset, accounts sought to influence public opinion about Kashmir, Pakistan and the Indian Army, and to promote a positive view of the Indian government after the removal of Kashmir’s constitutional privileges. According to Twitter, these accounts are presumed to have been located in India and, surprisingly, the United States. Twitter also disclosed a separate network of 568 accounts and 4,418,374 tweets, presumably originating in Pakistan. Analysis of that dataset was outside the scope of this investigation.

This latest India/US-originated multi-year dataset contained more than 360,000 tweets and 107,600 media files posted mostly between June 2019 and January 2022. Tweets were posted mainly in English and Hindi, indicating that the operations likely targeted both South Asian and international audiences. The frequency of posts reached a relative peak in June 2019, but the majority were posted during the end of 2020 and the first half of 2021.

Number of tweets posted per month by top six most frequently used tweet languages

Analysis of the most frequently used hashtags in this multi-year campaign showed that tweets primarily targeted online discourse relating to Kashmir. For example, the hashtags #GreenForKashmir and #RedForKashmir were used in 5,496 and 2,268 tweets respectively in June and July 2021. The #RedForKashmir hashtag is part of a social media movement that originated in the US aimed at protesting the Indian government’s removal of Kashmir’s special constitutional status. Our analysis showed attempts to hijack this hashtag with innocuous tweets or tweets portraying the Indian Army in a positive manner.

For example, the screenshot on the left below shows a legitimate and verified account using the #RedForKashmir hashtag to criticise the Indian government, while the screenshot on the right is a tweet posted by an account that uses common hashtags and text positively depicting the Indian Army found in the suspended campaign.

Many accounts currently active on Twitter are likely part of this network—but appeared to have evaded Twitter suspension—and continue to co-opt the #RedForKashmir hashtag and amplify the #GreenForKashmir hashtag.

For example, a tweet posted by zoya (below) uses the same tweet text and hashtags as users suspended in this dataset.

Beyond Kashmir-related content, the operators of this network sought to shape public perception about other territorial or political disputes in South Asia.

This included content about Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, which has faced separatist movements and accusations of human rights abuses by the local authorities. The hashtag #Balochistan was used 3,625 times (making it the 11th most frequently used hashtag) in the context of tweets calling for Balochistan independence and undermining the Pakistan Army in the region. The second most retweeted account was the official Twitter account of Sher Mohammad Bugti, the central spokesman of the Baloch Republican Party, a banned organisation in Pakistan that seeks Baloch independence.

In another example relating to modern geopolitical tensions, accounts in this network also sought to counter perceptions about China. The most shared link (4,357 times) was an Indian news agency article about China facing an economic slowdown. Funding issues with the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of major infrastructure projects in Pakistan that’s seen as the main plank of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, were mentioned in 1,316 tweets.

Overall, accounts in this network deployed the usual tactics to artificially amplify information favourable to their political goals and maintain a sustained presence on Twitter. Of all the posts in the dataset, 30.1% were retweets and mostly sought to artificially amplify tweets that were favourable to the Indian government. Accounts were created constantly throughout 2019 to 2022. The majority were created after 2020. Only 29 accounts (2.4%) were created before 2018, and they are likely commercial spam accounts that were later repurposed for political activity.

Number of accounts created per month between January 2018 and March 2022

This sustained multi-year campaign is one of many examples of how South Asian social media is now overcrowded with politically motivated actors seeking to interfere in or disrupt online discourse on the region’s most important disputes. Tweets in this campaign mostly received low engagement from legitimate users, but the volume and veracity of tweets suggests an escalating and persistent campaign.

Larger questions about the implications of restricting the rights of citizens to participate in democratic discourse and undermining the use of social media platforms as tools in human rights movements are left unanswered. As the region becomes more contested, covert and coordinated activities like this operation could undermine norms of behaviour that are conducive to open democracies.

Towards the end of March, an unusual sequence of diplomatic visitors passed through India’s capital. First came Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. They were followed by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

The parade continued. Next to arrive were Gabriele Visentin, the European Union’s special envoy for the Indo-Pacific; Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister; Jens Plötner, foreign and security policy adviser to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz; and Geoffrey van Leeuwen, foreign affairs and defence adviser to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Last and by no means least were US Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. There was also an online Indo-Australian summit.

The Ukraine war has exposed India’s strategic vulnerabilities in a tough neighbourhood as arguably nothing else could, raising fundamental questions about the country’s global position and regional security. But, paradoxically—as the slew of recent high-profile visits confirms—the conflict has increased India’s strategic importance and, in the short term, widened its options.

Has Prime Minister Narendra Modi used this room for manoeuvre well? The West, even as it seeks to line up India on its side vis-à-vis Ukraine, has signalled its understanding of India’s dependence on Russia for vital defence equipment and long history of close diplomatic relations with the Kremlin.

China has been somewhat surprised to find itself on the same page as India regarding the war. Both countries abstained in a series of United Nations votes condemning the Russian invasion and have maintained their communication channels with the Kremlin despite Western sanctions. China has been asking for restoration of ‘normal’ bilateral relations with India, which have been in a deep freeze since violent border clashes in June 2020 killed 20 Indian soldiers. ‘The world will listen when China and India speak with one voice,’ Wang reportedly stated on his recent visit to Delhi.

Russia, no doubt eager to thank India for ‘understanding’ the Kremlin’s position, has offered the country economic incentives—notably, discounted oil and gas and affordable fertiliser—to dissuade it from changing its stance.

While India’s longstanding focus on ‘strategic autonomy’ has kept it out of formal alliances, its broad geopolitical orientation has been veering towards a special partnership with the United States, notably in the Indo-Pacific. India is a member of the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, an informal grouping also including Japan and Australia that is widely seen as a way to check China’s regional ambitions.

India has also significantly increased its defence purchases from the West in recent years, and, with the US, is seeking to modernise its manufacturing base for military equipment. This process is likely to be accelerated by India’s realisation that its dependence on Russian supplies imposes significant constraints, particularly in the event of a future border crisis with China.

Singh, the US deputy national security adviser, pointedly warned of ‘consequences’ should India breach the Western-led sanctions on Russia, and he urged India to recognise the diminishing value of its close relationship with the Kremlin. ‘The more Russia becomes China’s junior partner, the more leverage China gains over Russia, the less and less favourable that is for India’s strategic posture,’ he told an Indian TV channel. ‘Does anyone think that if China breaches the Line of Actual Control, that Russia would now come to India’s defence? I don’t.’

China has been pushing the BRICS grouping (of which it is a member, along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as models of non-Western collaboration that can ensure a multipolar world order. But Chinese blandishments towards India are unlikely to succeed if China’s leaders aren’t willing to reverse their military gains from unprovoked Himalayan incursions in mid-2020. India will accept nothing less than a return to the status quo ante of April 2020 as the price for normalising bilateral relations. But whether it can leverage China’s overtures to achieve results on the ground remains to be seen.

Russia, meanwhile, is aware that India’s refusal to condemn its assault on Ukraine doesn’t imply support. India has at no stage endorsed the Russian military campaign, and its language has notably hardened as the war has dragged on. Indian statements now pointedly refer to the inviolability of borders, respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, and the inadmissibility of resorting to force to resolve political disputes, even while calling on ‘both sides’ to pursue diplomatic negotiations.

India has also been quick to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, sending 90 tonnes of relief materials. As the destruction has become more intense, its aid is likely to continue. India will gladly purchase essential supplies of fuel and fertiliser from Russia at discounted rates in roubles. But its diplomatic stance, and decreasing reliance on Russian defence equipment, mean that it’s not completely in Russia’s camp.

Still, India’s calls for peace in Ukraine would have been more credible had it taken steps to bring about that outcome. Whereas countries like Turkey and Israel have been actively engaged in peace diplomacy, India has made no effort to play a mediating role, despite at one point sending four cabinet ministers to Europe to supervise the evacuation of Indian citizens from Ukraine. Even Lavrov suggested in Delhi that India could help ‘support’ a mediation process.

India could have used the diplomatic attention it has been getting over Ukraine to carve out a role worthy of its aspirations for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Sadly, its ambitions seem to have been too modest.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, observed in 1946, ‘India, constituted as she is, cannot play a secondary part in the world. She will either count for a great deal or not count at all.’ Ukraine is a test case, and the jury remains out. Will today’s India count at all?

As NATO and Russia edge ever closer to conflict in Ukraine, a popular view is that any direct encounter between them will almost inevitably lead to nuclear war. Certainly, that’s the line that Russian President Vladimir Putin is spinning. In fact, history shows that there may be a lot of space for nuclear-armed adversaries to fight a limited conventional war without using nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War, many policymakers grew accustomed to the view that nuclear-armed adversaries would go to great lengths to avoid direct conventional military provocation for fear of escalation to a nuclear exchange. But at the same time, nuclear strategists believed that nuclear weapons could embolden challengers to take more and more risks underneath the nuclear shadow. In nuclear-war theory, this is called the ‘stability–instability paradox’.

The famous Cold War nuclear strategist Glenn Snyder argued that, while the fear of mutually assured destruction can create stability at a strategic level, nuclear weapons can simultaneously create instability by enabling lower levels of violence. In other words, creating a nuclear ceiling that both sides don’t wish to breach can provide considerable space for conflict beneath that ceiling.

The size of the space for non-nuclear conflict between nuclear powers is dependent on the circumstances and the countries involved. American political scientist Robert Jervis, for example, argued that challengers would be much more likely to engage in nuclear risk-taking, including the use of asymmetrical strategies against status quo powers.

For the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, this instability took the shape of numerous proxy wars between them across the globe, although the two countries were also generally careful to avoid direct conventional conflict between their military forces.

Although the Soviet military was deployed to assist local forces against the US and its allies in the Korean War (pilots) and Vietnam War (technical advisers), they mostly kept a low profile. Similarly, in the 1980s the US and UK quietly deployed small numbers of special forces to Afghanistan to train mujahideen in the use of anti-aircraft missiles, but (as far as we know) they didn’t engage in direct combat.

Yet the post–Cold War experience is that nuclear-armed adversaries are becoming increasingly willing to undertake large-scale conventional and sub-conventional conflicts directly with each other.

South Asia has long been called ‘the most dangerous place on earth’ because of the frequent nuclear sabre-rattling between India and Pakistan. But the two countries have also fought several wars and other conflicts in the 25 or so years since they became declared nuclear-weapon states.

This included the 1999 Kargil War which involved the incursion into Indian territory by some 5,000 Pakistani troops and paramilitaries, opposed by 20,000 Indian troops and the air force. At least 700 Pakistani and 500 Indian troops died in fighting before Pakistan withdrew.

Pakistan has also sponsored numerous terrorist attacks against India, including the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament and the bloody assault on Mumbai in 2008 that left some 175 dead. Pakistan has long been the challenger and nuclear risk-taker in these conflicts. India, the status quo power, had to ‘suck it up’ against these attacks, keeping its conventional responses to a minimum.

In recent years, though, India has been far more willing to conduct kinetic operations against its nuclear adversary. This included the so-called surgical strike by Indian special forces against terrorist bases in Pakistan following the 2016 Uri terrorist attack and missile strikes against Pakistani territory following the 2019 Pulwama terrorist attack. In the Pulwama case, despite nuclear rhetoric from both sides, the kinetic actions were followed by a delicate dance between the two countries to de-escalate.

And it’s not just India and Pakistan. In June 2020, Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a brief but bloody fight, the first major conflict on the Himalayan border since they both became nuclear-weapon states. Then, an attack initiated by Indian troops (without weapons) on a newly built Chinese outpost in Ladakh was met with a forceful and deadly response when an estimated 20 Indian troops were bludgeoned to death with clubs and rocks. The Chinese side suffered 35 casualties, according to US sources. The Indian army has since been authorised to use weapons against Chinese forces.

What all this means for NATO and Russia in Ukraine isn’t entirely clear. For their part, the US and its NATO allies have so far been careful to keep the Ukraine war as essentially a proxy conflict, supplying defensive weaponry but ruling out using airpower to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

But pressure for greater intervention will grow as the conflict continues, including the possible wholesale destruction of major Ukrainian cities by Russian forces, the potential release of radiological materials from nuclear power plants, or even the intentional use of chemical weapons by Russian forces. Options for NATO could include deploying military advisers or ‘international brigades’ of volunteers. There may also be calls for the deployment of troops to enforce humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians from the besieged cities.

In the meantime, Putin has been doing what he can to play up the nuclear threat against NATO, just as Pakistan has done against India for some 25 years. NATO, as a coalition of status quo powers (only three of which have nuclear weapons), will be sorely put to the test by Russia, the challenger and nuclear risk-taker.

The end of 2021 may prove to be an important milestone in the evolution of strategic relations between Russia and India. On 6 December, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew into New Delhi on a one-day state visit. The one-on-one meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which lasted three and a half hours, was aimed at restoring confidence between the two powers as time-proven and trusted strategic partners.

For Putin, the trip to India was only his second overseas visit since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (the other was the first meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden in Geneva). That fact alone signifies the importance of India to the Kremlin and the desire to keep relations close. But Putin’s brief visit to New Delhi was just part of broader high-level bilateral talks, which included an impressive entourage representing both countries.

The last time Putin and Modi met was in 2019 during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. After that, the two leaders paused their interactions. The reason, they claimed, was the Covid-19 outbreak.

The relationship had been cooling long before Covid-19 struck, however. New Delhi felt that Moscow was taking advantage of India, playing upon its fears of China. The case of India’s purchase of a modified Russian cruiser turned aircraft carrier is one example. It led India’s comptroller and auditor-general to lament that India had paid 60% more for a second-hand aircraft carrier than a new one would have cost. Admiral Arun Prakash, a former chief of the Indian naval staff, was equally scathing in his evaluation of the Russian MiG-29K aircraft that were to be used on the aircraft carrier.

Russia, for its part, was unhappy with India’s growing ties to the US. Between 2007 and 2020, India spent more than US$17 billion on military purchases from the US. Russia was particularly unhappy that India had entered into four ‘foundational’ security agreements with the US that cover the transfer of military information, logistics exchanges, compatibility and security.

At the same time, Russia’s relationship with China was growing through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its ties to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which was established to ensure the security of the Soviet Union’s successor states. Russia and China, seeing the US as a common antagonist, collaborated on technology transfers, Russia’s sale of energy products to China, and increased trade and tourism. They have engaged in joint military exercises and naval and air patrols.

That said, there remains the suspicion that Moscow is ‘passively facilitating’ New Delhi’s role in the Quad in order to restore equality in its strategic relations with Beijing. That could help revive, in turn, its stalled ‘new détente’ with the West.

India is suspicious of Russia’s developing relationship with Pakistan. New Delhi worries that Moscow is hyphenating its relationships with its two neighbouring enemies. That suspicion grew when Russia didn’t invite India to a meeting it convened with China, Pakistan and the US on the Afghanistan situation, a move that was seen as a deliberate snub in New Delhi.

India needs the potential security that Russia can provide. Little wonder, then, that it was prepared to purchase the S-400 air-defence system from Russia despite US pressure not to, and to offer an invitation to Putin to visit India, which he accepted.

The visit generated several important outcomes.

The two countries launched ‘2+2’ ministerial consultations involving their foreign and defence ministers, making Russia the fourth partner with which India has the same format (the other three are the other Quad members: Australia, Japan and the US).

They also signed another 10-year agreement on joint military–technical cooperation until 2031 and agreed to expand and deepen bilateral defence cooperation. Adding to that, Russia has reaffirmed its position as one of the principal providers of advanced military technology to the Indian military. Since 1991, India has acquired a comprehensive suite of weapons and platforms for all its fighting services worth some US$70 billion. The current value of India’s defence contracts with Russia is approximately US$15 billion.

The target of US$30 billion in annual trade by 2025, which was set in 2019, was confirmed.

Perhaps one of the most important outcomes for Russia was India’s reassurance that it is not siding with US strategic plans to form a regional political–military containment bloc. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the Indians ‘distanced themselves from the AUKUS bloc’. He said, ‘They are part of the Quad group, which brings together India, Japan, Australia and the US, and India … emphasises its interest in economic infrastructure and transport projects within this framework.’

Clearly, though, the talks didn’t eradicate all contentious points in the relationship. India is likely to remain concerned about Russia’s ties to China, Pakistan and the Taliban. Despite ambitious goals, the bilateral economic relationship won’t reach the levels of the ones that India enjoys with the US and China.

Even in the defence cooperation sphere, which is at the core of Russia–India strategic ties, some issues persist. For example, the two countries failed to finalise the reciprocal logistics support agreement, which was supposed to become an important stepping stone in closer military-to-military interaction.

On the other hand, the meetings highlighted the special nature of Russia–India strategic relations as well as mutual will to keep nurturing them.

The meetings in New Delhi came less than a week after the visit to Moscow of the president of Vietnam, a country with which Russia developed a comprehensive strategic partnership a decade ago. Both events highlight Russia’s more flexible approach towards its strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific, despite the centrality of China in Russia’s Asia policy.

Putin’s meeting with Modi also happened to take place a day before the Russian president had his second major interaction with Biden, and just days before the US-led Summit for Democracy, to which Moscow was not invited. For Putin, it was important to show Washington and Brussels that Russia has a network of strategic partners it can call upon.

Recognising that and Russia’s importance to India, New Delhi has tried to show Moscow that it’s not drifting away from the relationship. New Delhi recognises that Moscow can’t fully trust Beijing, which makes the Indo-Russian relationship all the more important. India’s purchase of the S-400 missile system despite US pressure was meant to send exactly that message. The launch of the 2+2 ministerial consultations is likely to ease Russia’s concerns that New Delhi has been gradually drifting towards the US geopolitical orbit, confirming that India is ‘not in anyone’s camp’.