Several high-level meetings between India and Russia have taken place over the past few months, involving the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense and two Heads of State, who met during Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in September, in Samarkand.

The war in Ukraine is the main topic on the agenda. Although India tried to maintain a certain distance, maintain dialogue with both sides, not condemn the Russian invasion.

• He notably abstained during the vote on a UN resolution condemning the war in Ukraine, insisting on issues of territorial integrity.
• The two countries shared a vision of an “increasingly multipolar and balanced” world, as Jaishankar recalled in Moscow.
• In addition, India has taken advantage of new routes for Russia’s cheap energy exports, especially oil, for its supply.

However, if a range of factors bring India closer to Russia, they are not enough to publicly support Moscow, and the presence of other factors standing in their way should not be underestimated.

• New Delhi should not be enthusiastic about the exploitation of Russian troops and equipment (which is widely used by the Indian army) in Ukraine, where they show their weakness.

• Moreover, the global interdependence of certain sectors and the increasingly isolated Russia will make it increasingly difficult for Russia to produce advanced weapons.

Russia’s attractiveness has declined sharply since the invasion of Ukraine. India does not intend to further tie itself to the pariahs of the international order, but can still choose areas where interaction with Russia can have importance: cheap energy supplies as well as support for a multipolar world order.

On the other hand, the partnership with the United States is also very important for India, which cannot run the risk of compromising by leaning too much towards Moscow. From this angle, we can understand the sentence that marked the Putin-Modi meeting in Uzbekistan, where Modi told his Russian counterpart that “today’s era is not the era of war”.

• However, the Lavrov-Jaishankar meeting comes at a very important time: at the same time COP 27 in Egypt — which doesn’t really fashion neither Putin (and both Xi Jinping) did personally participate — and a week before Indonesia’s G20.
• It is on this occasion that we will be able to gauge what India’s intentions are with regard to the reconstruction caused by the war in Ukraine, and whether its calls for peace are part of diplomatic rhetoric – or whether they are harboring a deeper desire to propose itself as a mediator.