India-Russia: A Changing Equation

On August 31, in Bishkek, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did something that New Delhi has increasingly been willing to do in public: he told Vladimir Putin that the war in Ukraine needs to end. Meeting the Russian president on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, Modi said that every day the war continues is a setback for humanity and called for a move “from endless war to an ​end to the war, ​to a cessation ⁠of hostilities.” Putin thanked him and said Russia was moving towards peace, while maintaining Moscow’s longstanding position that any settlement must meet Russian conditions.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. On the surface, this looks like a significant diplomatic intervention. It is also consistent with Modi’s increasingly familiar language on Ukraine: India supports dialogue, diplomacy and a negotiated settlement. But the problem with New Delhi is not what Modi says to Putin. It is what India does with Russia immediately before and after saying it. Just one week before the Bishkek meeting, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was in Moscow for two days of talks. On August 24, as Ukrainians were commemorating their independence day, India and Russia held the 27th session of their Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic and Cultural Cooperation. A week later, Modi and Putin reviewed progress across the full spectrum of the bilateral relationship, including economic ties, defense, energy, space and mobility, agreeing to continue strengthening what India officially calls its “Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.” Modi also highlighted the importance of the upcoming BRICS summit on Sept. 12-13 in New Delhi, which Putin plans to attend. Other Topics of Interest Drone Attack Sparks Fire at Russia’s Key Baltic Oil Port of Ust-Luga Drone Attack Sparks Fire at Russia’s Key Baltic Oil Port of Ust-Luga The juxtaposition is revealing. India is asking Russia to end the war while simultaneously working to make its partnership with Russia more commercially viable and less vulnerable to the consequences of the same war. That does not make India’s diplomacy meaningless. Nor does it mean India has chosen Russia over the West. New Delhi is pursuing a familiar oath of “strategic autonomy,” keeping channels open to all major powers. But there is a growing gap between India’s rhetoric about ending the war and the practical direction of its relationship with Moscow. Three areas make that gap particularly visible: energy, trade and transport connectivity. Reliable energy trade – a two-way street Energy remains at the heart of the India-Russia economic partnership. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, India emerged as the second-largest buyer of Russian crude oil after China. Washington’s tariff pressure subsequently placed renewed emphasis on India’s dependence on Russian energy and on the role of Russian oil revenues in financing Moscow’s war effort. The Trump administration sought to use India’s position vis-à-vis Russia as leverage in its broader trade negotiations with New Delhi in order to get concessions. Indian purchases of Russian crude did temporarily decline, but the trend proved short-lived. The latest Kpler figures, reported by the Financial Times, point to a sharp reversal, with Indian purchases reaching record levels this summer. In June and July 2026, India imported more than 2.6 million barrels of Russian crude per day, accounting for more than half of its crude imports. Yet, the more interesting development is that the energy relationship is becoming increasingly reciprocal. Faced with domestic fuel shortages following sustained Ukrainian attacks on its refineries, Russia has begun importing refined petroleum products from India. A 68,000-ton gasoline shipment from India recently reached Russia, with further Indian supplies expected. This marks an important shift. Russia remains a crucial source of crude for India, but India is increasingly becoming a supplier of refined fuel to Russia. The relationship is being shaped not only by longstanding strategic ties, but also by the unintended economic consequences of the war itself. Ukraine’s campaign against Russian refining infrastructure is shaping a new form of interdependence within the India-Russia energy relationship. Trade imbalance – and the financial settlement problem Trade presents a different problem. India-Russia merchandise trade reached roughly $68.7 billion in 2024-25, but Indian exports accounted for only $4.88 billion. The imbalance is overwhelmingly driven by Russian exports of crude oil and petroleum products, fertilizers, coal, metals and other commodities. For New Delhi, the challenge is therefore not simply to increase the volume of bilateral trade, but to change its composition. India wants to expand exports of pharmaceuticals, machinery, chemicals and food products, while encouraging greater Indian investment in Russia. The trade imbalance also exposes a persistent weakness in the financial architecture of the relationship. Although India and Russia have pursued settlement in national currencies, Russia has accumulated substantial rupee earnings from its exports to India without sufficient Indian imports to recycle those funds. The Reserve Bank of India acknowledged the problem in March, saying it was working on additional ways for Russian counterparts to use accumulated rupees for Indian imports or investment. The issue is therefore not the complete absence of a local-currency settlement mechanism, but its limited ability to solve a fundamentally unbalanced trade relationship. Without more Indian exports and investment, simply settling trade in rupees does not eliminate the surplus. Reaching the two countries’ declared $100 billion trade target by 2030 will therefore require not just more trade, but more balanced trade – and a more effective way of recycling the financial flows generated by Russian energy sales. Making transit corridors commercially viable The third challenge is connectivity. If India and Russia are serious about reaching their $100 billion trade target, they will need transport links that are faster, cheaper and less vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. The challenge is no longer simply to build alternative corridors, but to make them commercially viable. The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) remains the most established option, connecting India with Russia through Iran and the Caspian region. It provides an alternative to the Suez route and could reduce both transit times and costs. Its commercial success, however, depends on sufficient cargo volumes, streamlined customs procedures and reliable multimodal logistics. The Chennai-Vladivostok Eastern Maritime Corridor offers a more direct maritime alternative, potentially reducing transit time from around 40 days to approximately 24. Its real value will depend on whether it can support two-way trade – carrying Russian energy and commodities to India while providing a competitive route for Indian pharmaceuticals, machinery, chemicals and food products to Russia. The Northern Sea Route is the longer-term bet. It could deepen India’s access to Russia’s Arctic and Far Eastern economies, but remains commercially more challenging, requiring specialized vessels, polar navigation capabilities and supporting infrastructure. The three corridors therefore face different tests: the INSTC needs scale, Chennai-Vladivostok needs two-way cargo, and the Northern Sea Route needs to prove its commercial viability. Their success will ultimately be measured not by the number of agreements signed, but by whether they can move goods reliably and competitively. But their significance extends beyond transport economics. All three are part of a broader effort to build alternatives to routes and financial systems that have become more vulnerable to geopolitical pressure. They are instruments for ensuring that India-Russia commerce can continue even as the international economic environment around Russia becomes more fragmented. Empty rhetoric The contradiction exposed in Bishkek is that India continues to talk about ending the war while building a stronger, more durable relationship with Russia designed to survive that exact war. Modi told Putin that the world must move from “endless war” to “end of war.” Yet, around the same meeting, India was proactively deepening cooperation with Moscow in energy, trade, finance and connectivity – precisely the areas that can help Russia withstand the economic consequences of the war. India is not responsible for ending a war it did not start. Nor is it wrong to pursue its own interests. But New Delhi is one of the few major powers with both enormous economic ties to Russia and direct access to Putin. It has leverage, and it has chosen not to use it in any meaningful way. Instead, India is insulating its relationship with Russia from the war while asking Russia to end the war. That is not pressure. It is accommodation – wrapped in the language of peace.