 "US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian leader Vladimir Putin before their closed-door meeting on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP)")
India is not isolated from the upcoming meeting of US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, according to Michael Kugelman, a Washington DC-based analyst of South Asian affairs.
Kugelman said that there is a “very strong link” between the meeting and India.
Trump will meet Putin on Friday in Alaska. There are widespread expectations that the two could reach a deal regarding the war in Ukraine. Trump has boasted that he would know within two minutes of the meeting about the outcome. But critics are concerned that Putin could play him yet again and get a beneficial outcome without offering anything substantial on his part.
The Alaska summit appears to be the last-ditch effort made by President Trump to get Putin to agree to stop fighting, or at least to agree to a ceasefire, and tariffs on India could be taken off if the Russian leader agrees to a ceasefire, said Kugelman, a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
Trump has slapped India with 50 per cent tariffs — 25 per cent as part of the rollout of tariffs on July 31 on over 60 countries and additional 25 per cent as punishment for the purchase of Russian oil on August 6.
Kugelman said, “One of the reasons why I think Trump imposed this additional 25 per cent tariff on India was to try to pressure Russia to stop fighting by trying to get Russia’s most important commercial partners like India to stop importing goods from, from Russia. And, so if, there is an agreement that comes out of this meeting, if Putin does agree to a ceasefire or something close to it, you know, I suspect that that would take the heat off of India in the sense that President Trump would not want to pressure India as much. And, perhaps even potentially if things hold, we could see this, you know, this late, this latter 25 per cent tariff, the one that was imposed on India because of its oil imports from Russia being reduced or even melting away.”
Impact Shorts
View All“In that sense, I think it would be a big benefit for India as well. And we’ve seen, and this is not new, this has happened several times over the course of the war, Prime Minister Modi engaging with senior officials in both Russia and Ukraine. And one could assume that he delivered that message that he’s been delivering for quite some time that this is not an era of war,” said Kugelman.