India Recalibrates Between China Thaw, Russia Ties, US Risk
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Ajit Doval met China's Vice President Han Zhang and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing while FM S. Jaishankar held talks with Vladimir Putin and First Deputy PM Denis Manturov in Moscow, signaling simultaneous diplomatic engagement with both rivals.
- India-Russia bilateral trade has continued 'unabated' despite Western sanctions, driven primarily by India's purchases of Russian crude oil, according to the source.
- India is hardening the Quad's Indo-Pacific architecture with high-tech defense and industrial investments from Japan and critical-mineral/energy pipelines from Australia, while exporting BrahMos missiles to the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia to diversify their security dependencies away from Beijing.
- India's China thaw is rooted in economic necessity — China's property-sector crisis, slowing domestic demand, and rising Western trade barriers are pushing Chinese firms toward Indian markets, though the trade deficit's composition in electronics, machinery, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and renewable energy components exposes deep structural dependence.
- CIA Director John Ratcliffe's trip to Moscow last week was, per media reports cited in the source, focused on a potential threat to NATO member-states or Vladimir Putin's possible use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine — either of which would bring India's Russia position under intense pressure.
- Proposed US secondary sanctions bills empowering tariffs on major importers of Russian energy threaten direct US-India economic conflict, while Canadian PM Mark Carney's trade pushback against Washington is cited alongside India's moves as evidence that 'an era of uncontested superpower dominance is gradually ending.'
Why it matters: India's multi-alignment — hedging between Beijing, Moscow, Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, and Brussels — is forcing Western planners to abandon the unipolar assumption. With India consuming Russian oil at 'unabated' volumes and Congress weighing secondary sanctions on Russian energy importers, New Delhi's next purchasing decisions will materially reshape sanctions enforcement, oil-market stability, and Quad cohesion.
Ask SkimNews
