Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Plans Moscow Visit for Talks with Vladimir Putin

The Indian government announced on Thursday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Moscow on July 8 and 9 at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Modi has not traveled to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

“The leaders will review the entire range of multifaceted relations between the two countries and exchange views on contemporary regional and global issues of mutual interest,” Modi’s office said.

India and Russia usually hold an annual bilateral summit, but it has been canceled for the past three years, first by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and then by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Indian prime minister is also scheduled to fly to Austria from Moscow for talks with President Alexander Van der Bellen and Chancellor Karl Nehammer. It will be the first time an Indian prime minister has visited Austria in 41 years.

Modi’s agenda in Moscow includes addressing India’s soaring trade imbalance with Russia, which surpassed $60 billion in 2023. Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said on Friday that India wants to “correct” the imbalance created by importing gigantic amounts of Russian oil by increasing India’s exports, including agricultural products, medicine, and high technology.

India now purchases almost 40 percent of its oil from Russia, which sells the product at discount prices due to Western sanctions. India’s next three biggest suppliers are Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Russia ships more oil to India than all three of them combined.

China’s demand for Russian oil has slipped as the Chinese economy sputters, so Russia offered India even better prices to take up the slack, and India accepted. One of India’s biggest refiners, Nayara Energy, is partly owned by Russia’s state-owned energy conglomerate Rosneft, a rather tidy arrangement for the Russians.

Kwatra dismissed suggestions that the G7 nations might object to India undermining sanctions against Russia by increasing its imports.

“We have been in very regular touch with G7 essentially to protect and progress our national interest and our national needs,” the foreign secretary said.

Kwatra said Modi also wants to discuss the fate of Indian nationals who were “misled” into joining the Russian army and fighting in Ukraine, where at least four of them have been killed.

Several Indian families complained to Modi in March that their husbands, sons, and brothers were tricked into joining the Russian military by a scam that supposedly recruited them for lucrative private-sector jobs in Dubai. Indian police arrested four people allegedly connected with the human trafficking operation in June.

Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday he had filed a complaint with his opposite number in Moscow, Sergey Lavrov, over the conscripted Indian nationals.

“Only when they come back will we know the full circumstances – but, whatever the circumstances are, to us it is unacceptable that Indian citizens find themselves in the army of another country in a war zone,” Jaishankar said.

India still refuses to condemn Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine. Russia’s state-owned Rostec corporation said on Thursday that it is looking into potentially opening a factory in India to produce shells for Russia’s T-72 and T-90 tanks, both of which are also used by India’s ground forces. Rostec said it may also produce gunpowder in India.

Some Western leaders grumbled that Modi’s trip to Moscow would give Putin a much-needed diplomatic victory at a moment when the West is trying to isolate Putin and increase pressure on him to end the Ukraine war. The India-Russia summit will roughly coincide with a NATO meeting in Washington to discuss the Ukraine war, adding to the symbolism of Modi’s trip.

“The visit of a leader of a state such as India demonstrates that Russia isn’t facing international isolation, and for the Kremlin this is very important,” Moscow-based India expert Aleksei Zakharov told Bloomberg News.

India’s suspension of summit meetings with Russia after the coronavirus panic receded was widely seen as an expression of tacit displeasure with the Ukraine conflict, so resuming those meetings can only be seen as India swallowing its discomfort to keep Russia’s oil flowing.

Indian officials downplayed the chances of any major “breakthrough agreements” being announced during Modi’s visit and said the trip was nothing more than the resumption of regularly scheduled bilateral meetings that were held for many years before the pandemic. The Biden administration does not seem inclined to risk growing U.S. ties with India by leaning on Modi to cancel his Moscow trip.

India also seems worried about Russia’s strengthening partnership with China, India’s great regional rival. Modi seems determined to change the impression that Russia is turning more to China as India drifts into NATO’s orbit, among other things, by purchasing fewer weapons from Russia and more from the U.S. and Europe.

“India’s objective is to ensure that Russia is not in China’s corner and that, even if it does not explicitly support India, it maintains a permanent neutrality in the India-China territorial disputes,” Zahkarov said.