Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in New Delhi on Thursday for meetings with top officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi welcomed Putin with a hug and whisked him off to a three-hour private dinner at his residence. The two leaders are scheduled to hold a bilateral summit on Friday.
Modi praised Putin, and Russia, as “friends” both personally and politically, praising the relationship between New Delhi and Moscow as “a time-tested one that has greatly benefited our people.”
This is Putin’s first visit to India since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He arrived with a large entourage of Russian businesspeople, reportedly in the hope of boosting bilateral trade to over $100 billion by 2030.
Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday that “Russia is India’s companion in happiness and in sorrow,” but added that India hopes to “balance” their lopsided trade relationship, which currently sees Russian exports to India far outweighing its imports.
Goyal cited six areas where he hopes Russia will agree to purchase more Indian goods, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, telecom, industrial components, and labor. Russia has a pronounced labor shortage, and India has manpower to sell.
“We can take so much from Russia, and we have so much to offer to Russia. The sky is the limit,” Goyal gushed.
Another of Putin’s goals is wooing India away from Western suppliers for its defense needs. India procured most of its weapons from Russia until about five years ago, when the Indians began shopping around for other hardware to gain a qualitative advantage over its rival China. The Russian invasion of Ukraine later consumed most of Russia’s military output, delaying shipments to India and prompting New Delhi to collect more bids from American and European suppliers.
India’s heavy purchases of Russian oil opened a rift with the West and, when President Donald Trump announced heavy punitive tariffs against India for funding Putin’s war machine with its oil consumption, India responded by threatening to cancel arms deals with the United States.
India is reportedly interested in buying more of Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missiles, which performed well for India during its recent conflict with Pakistan, and the Kremlin said on Thursday that Putin will push Russia’s Su-57 fighter jets as an alternative to cutting-edge European and American fighters.
Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said on Thursday that India’s military partnership with Russia is growing at a “healthy pace” despite “geopolitical uncertainty.”
In an interview with Indian media on Thursday, Putin took aim at Trump’s punitive tariffs on India.
“If the U.S. has the right to buy our fuel, why doesn’t India have that privilege? The U.S. still buys nuclear fuel from Russia. India has the same rights as the U.S.,” Putin argued, referring to American purchases of low-enriched uranium from Russia.
The United States nominally imposed an embargo on Russian uranium in May 2024, and Russia nominally imposed a ban on exporting uranium to the United States a few months later, but both sides have issued special permits and waivers to keep the uranium trade going.
Putin conceded in the interview that Western sanctions have caused “a certain decline in overall trade turnover” this year, but he dismissed the effect as a “minor adjustment” to India’s trade with Russia. He insisted that Russia’s energy trade with India remains healthy despite U.S. sanctions.
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