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India’s ties with Beijing have frayed even as relations with Moscow lose warmth because of their actions

Russia’s growing footprints in Africa provide West African junta-led countries with an opportunity to recalibrate their foreign policy away from traditional western alliances as well as China. But in what ways does Moscow’s re-emergence in the region offer strategic options to these countries?

Despite the positive signs in India-Russia ties, one must be careful not to overestimate their significance when considered alongside some long-term trends in international affairs such as the relations of the US and its closest challengers China and Russia.

Despite public display of affection, all is not well in the India-Russia relationship.

Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine follows its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued direct support for separatist activities in eastern Ukraine, marking a new chapter in Moscow's geopolitical approach. China's response and its overt diplomatic, financial, and economic support for Russia was also noteworthy. This brief assesses the contours of the new geopolitical formation (the ‘DragonBear’, a term coined by this author)

The shift began with the election of Trump who refused to go by conventional thinking on Russia.

The 70th anniversary of Russia-India relations is an opportune time to make a comprehensive assessment of the current state of their cooperation, keeping in mind the long history of friendship between the two countries. In the last few years, India and Russia have been struggling to retain the legacy of their long-term relationship while moving beyond the traditional spheres of cooperation to reach new heights. To expand their bilateral agenda,

Indian PM Narendra Modi this week makes his maiden visit as Prime Minister to Russia, one of India's closest strategic partners. This seeming delay in travelling to Russia may surprise some, given that the Prime Minister has travelled to almost all the major powers as well as most of India's immediate neighbourhood.

Russia saw BRICS as an anti-Western grouping and it can be said that this Russian BRICS-view still persists. The main problem with this position is that BRICS was not crafted to be a foreign policy vehicle.

Despite sharing a close historical relationship based on the Soviet Union’s support during the 1971 Liberation War, Bangladesh had for long been out of the scope of Russia’s foreign policy priorities. This is best exemplified by the fact that no Soviet/Russian foreign minister had visited the country until September 2023. However, amid Western sanctions due to its war in Ukraine and tensions with the US, Russia is seeking to reinvigorate ties

There are growing tensions in New Delhi’s engagement within this arrangement and its other alignments.

The stagnation in US-Russia relations does not augur well for New Delhi's strategic interests. It's a throwback to the Cold War, when India had to choose between the two countries

This report is the text of a presentation made at a seminar on ’Military-technical Cooperation between Russia and India: Status and Perspectives for Cooperation’, organised jointly by Observer Research Foundation and Unity for Russia Foundation, on October 5-7, 2007 in Moscow.

Re-kindling “the special and privileged nature” of the strategic partnership of India and Russia at BRICS

It has never been a better time and never before has India come with this much strength to the negotiating table. In the end, reaffirmation and recalibration of Russia' role in India's future was prominent and the short and successful summit was capped by perhaps another nuclear submarine for India and a doctorate for Prime Minister Singh.

India’s engagement in the Arctic has evolved from a primarily scientific focus to one increasingly shaped by geopolitical and strategic considerations. However, this shift highlights an inconsistency in India’s strategic decision-making: while New Delhi seeks to help shape a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific by working with like-minded democracies, its Arctic strategy remains largely anchored in cooperation with Russia, whose actions in U

Through its actions in Ukraine, Russia has challenged the global order in fundamental ways and India’s foreign policy won’t be immune from its reverberations

Proximity changes the priorities for India in a conflict on the doorstep.

The Indian public sphere is unlikely to engage comprehensively with the happenings in the run up to the Russian presidential elections. On the other hand, the Indian establishment will keenly follow political developments in Russia as the importance of the election outcome.

India will be there at the G-7 to remind the West once again that it is playing an important role in the global oil market.

If Putin and Manmohan Singh want to capture some of the magic of the past, it is imperative to look beyond government-to-government ties and engage the private sector as well as civil society. The India-Russia relationship is not only about defence or nuclear issues but about people.

Both India and Russia need to start thinking strategically about the Central Asian region, not letting emotions guide their foreign policy decisions. This was the consensus reached at a conference organised recently in Delhi.

Apart from dispelling the sense of drift, Putin’s visit was a clear signal of the commitment to a multipolar global order and reinforced strategic balance as an enduring factor in ties

As hard-boiled realists, Modi and Putin must acknowledge the new dynamic around them, find ways to limit its impact on the bilateral relationship and move quickly towards expanding the scope of their commercial ties and revitalising their cooperation in energy, defence and high-technology sectors.

During Prime Minister Manmohan Singh¿s early-December 2005 visit to Moscow, India and Russia signed landmark agreements to further cement their defence cooperation that dates back to almost half a century. These include an agreement on the defence of intellectual property rights that prevents either side from using technologies received from the other without special permission, joint construction of a multi-purpose transport plane

India-Russia defence relations have already become mature which normally comes in alliance politics like anglo-saxon model or very special relationship like US-Israel. Very few parallel example can be found in case of other countries like the ones that Russia has developed with India.

Despite the kind words, emergency cooperation, and the defence relationship, there are longer term difficulties in the India-Russia relationship that are unlikely to be easy to resolve.

Economic ties were the cornerstone of Indo-Soviet relations. Even the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, which was essentially of a political-security nature, stressed upon “economic, scientific and technological cooperation”.[1] Although the India-Russia ties in general survived the upheavals of the early 1990s, economic relations began to cool in the post-Soviet period. Despite many ambitious targets set during various

The India-Russia military technical relationship has withstood the test of time. Despite strains since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the relationship has remained highly critical both in terms of the level of trust between the two states and the imperatives of sustaining a military-technical relationship to counter the growth of Chinese power. A more synergistic military-technical is possible, and Moscow and New Delhi must explore ways to con