3 years of Ukraine war: How thaw in Russia-US ties vindicates India’s stance

Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency has been quite an unsettling experience for many. But one of the worst-hit persons is Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, whose war against Russia has now lost its prime geopolitical backer by all means. Unlike President Joe Biden, who had extended great material and moral support to Zelensky, Trump has shown that there is no love lost between the two by calling him out as a “dictator without elections”.

In a recent press conference, Trump even accused him of starting the war while lamenting how the US has lost billions of dollars because of this conflict. Clearly, the ‘Gravy Train’ which Trump has blamed Zelensky of enjoying so far is now going to end with Ukraine being compelled to end the hostilities with Russia.

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Even as President Trump has shifted gears by abandoning the previous administration’s policy on Ukraine, a rapprochement between the United States and Russia also seems to be imminent. Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz met a Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. This came after a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the US President expressed his desire to end the three-year-old Ukraine-Russia conflict through a solution that did not even involve the European allies. There are also indications that Trump may even meet Putin in Saudi Arabia in the coming days. As per reports, the agenda of this meeting is not only to end the war but also to reset the overall US-Russia ties which have significantly deteriorated in the last few years.

It seems that the peace formula as unveiled by President Trump will help a great deal to mend the bilateral relations between the two countries. Details that have so far emerged suggest that Trump is looking to cut a deal that would completely sideline Ukraine, block the country’s membership in NATO, with the key condition being Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. With such a pro-Kremlin approach, the US-Russia equation will definitely benefit.

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However, while Putin has a lot of reasons to be elated, the European allies of the United States are clearly miffed with Trump’s suggestions. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already called Trump’s offer a ‘dictated peace’, which would never find his support. The question of not just Europe but Ukraine itself being ignored from the negotiations has come as a worrying proportion for each of these actors involved.

Even as Europe and other countries who alienated Russia on cue during the war are seething from the changed geopolitical winds, there is one country which is feeling vindicated because of the strategic choice that it made in staying friendly with Russia and that country is India. As soon as hostilities had broken out between Russia and Ukraine in the year 2022, India had come under a great deal of pressure from the West, which was forcing the country to condemn Putin, calling him a ‘war criminal’, and even admonishing India for availing the Russian oil that was being offered at a discounted price. Due to the fact that the Modi government came closer to the West through frameworks such as Quad, it was expected that India would also join the West’s side during the war.

However, as per the calculations of the current government, if Quad was in India’s interest to deter China, then so was the country’s closeness with Russia as well. If India had joined the West in alienating Russia, then Russia would have had no choice but to fall into a tighter Chinese embrace. The country was also one of the major suppliers of weapons to India despite all the attempts to diversify the sources of arms procurement. Even the discounted oil that India secured from Russia helped in keeping the price of oil low domestically and helped in reining in inflation that other countries had to suffer from.

Today, when Trump himself has acknowledged Russia’s sovereign interests, especially its concerns regarding the expansion of NATO, what does the world have to say for India? That war was entirely Europe’s war, where the countries on the continent were expecting everyone to consider their problem as the world’s problem. India’s External Affairs Minister Jaishankar was absolutely correct in pointing this out.

Now that a rapprochement between Putin and Trump is on the horizon, the Modi government’s multi-alignment policy is particularly set to gain. Firstly, in the eyes of Russia, it has earned even more credibility. Secondly in Washington, India’s comprehensive partnership with Russia would no longer be treated like a liability. This would obviously ease off pressure in the short term but also provide more scope for New Delhi to navigate its interests in the long term.

One of the best outcomes of the Russia-US thaw would be how Putin’s alienation would end, which means his dependence on China for comfort would also come down. If Trump has abandoned America’s European allies, then even Putin also does not envisage any role for Xi Jinping to play. In international politics, they often say that friends are always temporary but interests are permanent. The strategic bet made by PM Modi in the summer of 2022 is now all set to pay. Once again, an interest-driven foreign policy has benefitted India, proving that Nehruvian consensus over moral considerations has absolutely no place.

The author is a New Delhi-based commentator on geopolitics and foreign policy. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. She tweets @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.