Putin, between Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping
Moscow (AsiaNews) - Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in India tonight for a 24-hour visit to reiterate good relations with New Delhi, which go back to Soviet times, and show that despite the Ukrainian crisis, Moscow is not isolated.
In Delhi, the Kremlin leader is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee as part of the 15th annual India-Russia Summit.
According to official announcements and media reports, a number of agreements will be signed in a number of areas, like energy (with joint projects in Siberia, feasibility studies for the first pipeline between the two countries and Russian-built nuclear power plants), defence (with Moscow looking for new partners in the wake of Western economic sanctions,) and the diamond trade (with the state monopoly Alrosa planning to boost exports to India).
The Indian government has called the visit historic, describing the Russian leader as a good friend of India, and a supporter of the Russian-Indian strategic partnership. New Delhi did not in fact join Western sanctions against Russia.
However, big announcements about strategic alliances between Moscow and Delhi have a history of not going beyond words, analysts say. The more so since Russia has renewed its rapprochement with China, which for India remains more of a rival than an ally.
Despite heading a nationalist and anti-Western party like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's Modi still wants friendlier relations with the United States. In fact, he is scheduled to host US President Barack Obama this coming January.
"Modi and Putin are similar leaders. They like to announce big schemes," said Gulshan Sachdeva, head of the Centre for European Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "It might make sense to do so - whether or not they come to fruition is another matter."
For Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, the Kremlin's so-called Asian turn has been directed so far only towards China on conditions more favourable to Beijing than to Moscow, like the recent US$ 400 billion deal to pump Russian gas into China.
By comparison, Russo-Indian trade is only at billion, one-ninth of the volume between Russia and China.
Thus, "it appears that Putin's visit to India this week will not lead to a breakthrough. Friendly words will be exchanged, goodwill demonstrated, and a certain number of agreements signed, but the potentially key relationship will remain adrift", Trenin wrote on The Moscow Times.
Russia between India and China
The People's Republic under Xi Jinping has shown a strong interest in building an Asian order that excludes the US and Japan, and in this context a rapprochement with India may be helpful.
Some Western analysts also believe Putin wants to revive Gorbachev's old idea of a strategic "triangle" between Russia, India and China to oppose the United States in Asia, with Moscow as a bridge between the two Asian giants.
However, for Sergey Radchenko, lecturer in the History of American-Asian Relations at the University of Nottingham (Ningbo campus, China), that strategy failed because neither Delhi nor Beijing were really interested in working together. Even today, there are strong doubts about its potential.
As China begins to implement its twin Silk Road strategies, Russia and India need to come up with their own visions of economic integration across Eurasia, including closer links with China as well as other countries, from Southeast Asia to Central Asia, Iran and Turkey.
According to analysts, the current balance of power in Asia needs more than an able third country to facilitate collaboration between China and India. So far, Gorbachev's three-way relationship has only found one venue, the BRICS group of nations.
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04/07/2023 18:57
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