Ballet With The Bear

After the tango with the US, the bonhomie with Russia as president Putin arrives for the 19th India-Russia annual summit. New Delhi seeks to balance Russian concerns of a pro-us tilt and Indo-US Defence agreements.

- Sandeep Unnithan

Russian president Vladimir Putin flies into New Delhi in his customised IL-96 jet on October 4 to participate in the 19th instalment of what will be one of the most closely watched IndoRussian summits. Geopolitical shifts this year have fuelled such uncertainty—India’s perceived tilt towards the US after a recently concluded ‘Two Plus Two’ dialogue in New Delhi last month and the prospect of US sanctions being applied to India if it buys Russian defence equipment. This would explain why New Delhi is currently working out the modalities of what will be a vastly symbolic photo-op during President Putin’s visit— the gift to Russia of a flight-worthy Indian-built MiG-21 during the 19th Indo-Russian Summit on October 5.

The gift will evidently convey what defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently called India’s “time-tested relationship with Russia”. Beginning 1964, over 1,200 of these iconic jet fighters were bought from the former Soviet Union after India’s attempts to buy similar missile-armed supersonic aircraft were rebuffed by the US and UK. In a geopolitical quirk, the Russian air force never inherited any of the Soviet air force MiG-21s after the Soviet Union’s break-up in 1991 as they were stationed in the CIS countries. Russia, meanwhile, continued the Soviet Union’s legacy of being India’s largest supplier of military hardware.