Friendships between nations are usually described in the language of interest, not sentiment. Yet the India-Russia relationship has, for over six decades, defied that convention. Through every major conflict India has fought since independence, Moscow has been present in some tangible form, whether through arms, diplomatic cover at the United Nations, or political support when New Delhi needed it most. That consistency, across changing regimes in Moscow and shifting global alignments, is why the relationship continues to be described in New Delhi not merely as strategic, but as one between old and reliable friends.
The clearest illustration remains the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. As India prepared to respond to the crisis in East Pakistan, the United States tilted unmistakably toward Islamabad, even deploying the Seventh Fleet toward the Bay of Bengal in a show of support for Pakistan. The Soviet Union, by contrast, signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation months earlier, and backed India diplomatically through the war, including vetoing resolutions at the UN Security Council that would have worked against Indian interests. For a country fighting a war with existential humanitarian stakes, that backing at the world’s most powerful diplomatic table was not a small thing.
This pattern was not confined to 1971. During the 1962 war with China, though the Soviet Union’s position was more complicated given its own tensions with Beijing, Moscow avoided siding against India and continued defence cooperation in the years that followed. In the 1965 war with Pakistan, the Soviet Union played the role of peace broker at Tashkent, hosting talks that de-escalated the conflict without India losing the ground its forces had gained. Decades later, during the Kargil conflict in 1999, Russia provided crucial military supplies and spare parts at a time when Western nations were more circumspect, helping the Indian Air Force sustain high-altitude operations against intruding Pakistani forces.
Beyond individual wars, the defence relationship itself has been a form of standing support. A significant share of India’s military hardware, from fighter aircraft to submarines to air defence systems, has Russian or Soviet origins, often supplied on terms, financing and technology-transfer arrangements that Western suppliers were unwilling to match, particularly during the Cold War decades when India’s non-aligned posture made Washington wary of arming New Delhi generously. The S-400 air defence system, delivered despite American sanctions threats under CAATSA, is only the most recent example of Moscow continuing to supply India even when doing so invited friction with other powers.
What makes this history notable is its consistency across very different eras. The Soviet Union that backed India in 1971 was a communist superpower locked in the Cold War. The Russia that supplied Kargil-era ammunition was a weakened post-Soviet state rebuilding its own economy. The Russia of today, under sanctions and consumed by its war in Ukraine, has continued to prioritise its India relationship, evident in President Putin’s recent reception of External Affairs Minister Jaishankar in Moscow and the continuing expansion of trade, energy and defence ties. Few bilateral relationships in India’s modern history have survived so many changes of government, ideology and global circumstance with this degree of continuity.
None of this means the relationship has been without complication, or that gratitude should curdle into uncritical dependence. India has diversified its defence purchases considerably in recent years, partly in response to delays and quality concerns with some Russian equipment, and partly as a deliberate hedge against overreliance on any single supplier. The relationship has also, at times, served Moscow’s interests as much as New Delhi’s, offering the Soviet Union and later Russia a reliable market and diplomatic partner in Asia even as its options elsewhere narrowed. Reading the friendship as purely selfless would be as inaccurate as dismissing it as purely transactional; like most durable alliances, it has always rested on genuine convergence of interest as much as sentiment.
Still, when India has needed a partner unwilling to abandon it under pressure, from the war rooms of 1971 to the high-altitude battles of Kargil, Russia has, more often than not, shown up. In a world where alliances are frequently transactional and short-lived, that pattern of consistency carries its own weight. As India navigates an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape, balancing ties with the United States, Europe and the Quad against its historical relationship with Moscow, this record of wartime solidarity remains a meaningful, if not the only, factor shaping how New Delhi weighs the value of the Russia relationship going forward.
— DA Editorial Desk (Dhruba Deka)