Oldest friends: India and Russia

Oldest friends: India and Russia

News:

1. India needs strong commitment to deepen its engagement with Russia in coming years.

Important Facts:

2. India and Russia in a recent meet has announced various important agreements of geopolitical importance such as:

• Including a $5.43 billion S-400 Triumf missile system
• Space cooperation arrangement to put an Indian in space
• Action plan for a new nuclear plant
• Attempt to diversify ties and increase bilateral trade in energy sector.

3. Though the two sides didn’t announce an agreement between ONGC Videsh and Gazprom as expected, several billions of dollars’ worth of investment and energy deals have been finalised.
4. However, significantly, the agreements discussed during Mr. Putin’s visit have geopolitical implications and denotes India’s desire to deepen defence cooperation with Russia
5. Washington has already reacted to the S-400 deal under CAATSA, made it clear that waiver will not be on a “country” basis, but on a “transaction-by-transaction” basis.
6. Accepting a waiver will implicitly commit India to reducing its intake of Russian military hardware.
7. India has made it clear that it regards the US as an extremely important country with which it wants strong and deep ties. But this cannot come at the cost of India’s sovereign foreign policy choice.
8. It can be argued because of improvement in relations with China and strong ties with Russia, India has managed to keep more strategic space for itself which will help India to strike a better deal with U.S.