India's approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows diplomatic maturity

  Meanwhile, Russia has waged a grinding war of attrition, leveraging its greater depth in military manpower, a larger population and resource base, a mobilised defence-industrial ecosystem, and an ability to sustain an unrelenting operational tempo. The steady advance by Russian armed forces across eastern and southern Ukraine since last year underscores a basic truth: time, resources, and reserves favour Russia. It also increasingly dominates the battlefield, and is ratcheting up pressure through focused artillery and drone attacks in pursuit of its objectives.

  Parallel political developments in the West have reinforced this dynamic. The return of Donald Trump as President of the United States (US), the red carpet welcome accorded by him to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Anchorage Summit in August 2025, the new US National Security Strategy’s openness to renewed engagement with Russia, and European fatigue over economic strain and unsustainability of open-ended military and financial backing to Ukraine have bolstered the Russian resolve. 

  Recent diplomatic negotiations suggest renewed momentum towards a peace settlement. Issues being addressed include matters of territory, security guarantees, and sovereignty. Russia seeks recognition of its control over Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea; a neutral Ukraine; and renunciation of Ukraine’s aspirations for North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership. For Ukraine and its European Union (EU) backers, such demands were initially unacceptable.  Prolonged conflict risks further devastation for Ukraine against a larger, better-resourced adversary. A modus vivendi could eventually emerge from US diplomatic pressure, Russian battlefield advances, and European limitations and exhaustion. It would allow Russia to lock in territorial gains, but leave Ukraine dependent on long-term Western security guarantees and reconstruction assistance. While still premature, such a “managed peace” may well form the backdrop against which India’s post-conflict calculations need to be made.  

Deep-rooted partnership

  India has walked a careful line through the conflict: urging dialogue and diplomacy, drawing attention to humanitarian consequences, and refusing to join unilateral Western sanctions. This has been characterised by some critics as projecting “neutrality”. In reality, it reflects principled pragmatism, rooted in history and enduring, long-term interests. 

India’s partnership with Russia is neither episodic nor transactional. It is time-tested and deep-rooted, forged since the mid-1950s and reinforced during moments of diplomatic stress, such as the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and following India’s nuclear tests of May 1998. Over the past two and a half decades, this relationship has been consciously nurtured through annual summits and sustained institutional engagement. It envisages a shared commitment to a multipolar world and, within it, a multipolar Asia.

  This contrasts with India’s experience with Ukraine since the latter’s independence in 1991. In 1996, Ukraine signed a contract to supply 320 T-80UD main battle tanks to Pakistan, making deliveries in 1997-1999 despite strong and repeated Indian objections. The sale affected the military balance in South Asia. Moreover, immediately after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, Ukraine not only condemned them but asserted that no defence or security considerations could justify them.

  Meanwhile, its defence engagement with Pakistan continued apace. It supported key Pakistani platforms, such as diesel engines for the Al-Khalid main battle tank. Discussions on modernising Pakistan’s T-80UD fleet began in 2016 and led to a 2021 contract for their maintenance and overhaul. The work started in February 2022 at the Malyshev plant in Kharkiv, but was interrupted by the Russian invasion and later military strikes on that plant. Juxtaposed against Russia’s steady alignment with India’s interests, these examples of the Ukraine-Pakistan defence relationship help explain India’s stance towards the parties to the conflict and abstention on UN resolutions concerning Ukraine. 

  Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visits to both Russia and Ukraine in 2024 signalled a balanced approach to the conflict, grounded in a hard-headed assessment of national interest and reinforcing India’s capacity to engage all sides. The challenge ahead for India lies in translating this into constructive influence across the post-conflict landscape.

  Strategic autonomy

  Western critiques sometimes misread India’s approach to the Ukraine issue as ambivalence or pro-Russian bias. It is neither. India’s approach reflects the application of strategic autonomy in a world that increasingly demands binary alignments.

India’s contemporary foreign policy embodies multi-alignment: an active, confident strategy of cultivating sometimes overlapping partnerships based on issue-specific convergence and avoiding zero-sum choices. The US is India’s comprehensive global strategic partner, with expanding cooperation in defence, technology, and trade. Russia remains an indispensable, special, and privileged strategic partner, including in defence, oil and gas, nuclear energy, space, and other sensitive sectors. 

The Ukraine conflict tested this dual-track, yet India has navigated it well by adhering to core principles. It has consistently called for an end to hostilities, highlighted humanitarian aid, and resisted unilateral sanctions outside the United Nations framework which weaponise economic power in ways that disproportionately harm vulnerable societies and undermine long-term global stability.

  Crucially, India has compartmentalised disagreement from cooperation. Engagement with the US and Europe and with Russia have not suffered. This ability to disagree without disengaging reflects diplomatic maturity — an understanding that global challenges are best managed through sustained engagement rather than rupture.

  India’s objective has never been to appease either side, but to maintain its own strategic options. A weakened Russia overly dependent on China does not meet India’s interest. Equally, India has sought to maintain strong ties with the US despite trade frictions that affect its economic performance. Under challenging circumstances, India has pursued a carefully calibrated balance and sustained it. 

  Pragmatism pays

  India prioritises stable, affordable energy supplies to meet its growing energy needs, guided by affordability and security rather than geopolitics. Diversifying suppliers and routes ensures resilience against disruptions, market volatility, and external pressures. Within this framework, Indian private firms and public sector units weigh commercial and other considerations, including sanctions-related constraints, before making purchase decisions. While diplomacy framed India’s international stance, energy security shaped its operational response to the Ukraine conflict. India imports over 85 per cent of its crude oil, making affordability, reliability, and diversification its critical imperatives. The Ukraine war created an unexpected opportunity: with Western sanctions diverting Russian crude, India secured oil at steep discounts. Indeed, one could argue the initial US sanctions even unlocked Russian crude. 

The share of Russian crude oil in India’s imports rose from 2-3 per cent before 2022 to over 35 per cent at its peak in 2023. Indian refiners adapted with remarkable speed and shifted to Russian Ural grades, helping to insulate the Indian economy from global price spikes and inflationary pressures. Re-export of refined products also significantly benefitted foreign markets, including the EU and the US. 

  There has been sustained US pressure, including through an additional 25 per cent duty imposed on August 27, 2025, on all items imported from India. US sanctions on the Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil and their subsidiaries took effect on November 21 last year. Trump vowed to stop India’s oil imports from Russia so as to degrade the latter’s ability to raise revenue for its war with Ukraine. During his visit to India in December 2025, Putin reiterated Russia’s readiness to “continue uninterrupted fuel shipments to support India’s fast-growing economy”. Imports of Russian oil into India have trended downward lately.

  Beyond hydrocarbons, civilian nuclear energy is a key pillar of India’s partnership with Russia. The Kudankulam nuclear power project is advancing steadily; a new site for Russian nuclear reactors in India is being finalised. Cooperation on small modular reactors represents a new frontier. They align well with India’s long-term goals of energy security, grid resilience, and cleaner power. Russian expertise offers scope for technology transfer and co-development, shifting the relationship from buyer-seller to co-innovation.

  Beyond peace

  A credible and comprehensive peace settlement in Ukraine would benefit India. Russia seeks buyers beyond China for its crude oil and liquefied natural gas, while India needs stable, affordable energy. In the short term, discounts on Russian oil will likely narrow as risk premiums fall, but the larger gain would be through price stability, predictable supply, and the removal of legal and financial overhangs on Indian firms. Normalised trade flows and increased global crude supply would exert downward pressure on prices — an unambiguous positive for a major energy importer like India.

  A peace settlement would vindicate India’s consistent advocacy for dialogue and diplomacy, rather than the use of force, to settle disputes. Russia, seeking to avoid overdependence on China, would continue to prioritise India as a long-term energy partner, including through structured energy agreements and expanded civilian nuclear cooperation.

  India continuing its close engagement with Russia would no longer remain a critical issue in its relations with the US, which itself would be looking for a revamped relationship with Russia. This is especially so since India’s actions represented expressions of strategic autonomy and legitimate national interest and not acts of defiance. The US’ appreciation of India’s constructive role during the Ukraine conflict would help shape the future of our defining partnership.

  The trilateral US-Russia-Ukraine talks held in Abu Dhabi on January 23-24 this year have been productive, with Russian and Ukrainian delegations also interacting directly. Differences remain and reportedly centred on territorial disputes, especially Russian insistence that Ukraine vacate the remainder of the Donbas region, including Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, and Ukraine rejecting this as capitulation. 

  De-escalation steps, oversight of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and a ceasefire framework were also discussed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the discussions “constructive”. At the time of writing, the parties reconvene in early February in Abu Dhabi for the next round, signalling momentum. It is too early to talk of success. 

  Nonetheless, the broad contours of a peace settlement are gradually crystallising. For India, the conflict’s endgame reinforces the wisdom of its approach. India’s commitment to strategic autonomy and multi-alignment has enabled it to safeguard its energy security, maintain critical partnerships, and advocate dialogue and diplomacy from a position of credibility.

  The hope for peace may not necessarily ease global politics, as a settlement could ignite fresh geopolitical flux. India’s task will be to ensure that its voice is heard not as an echo of others, but as the confident articulation of a civilisational state pursuing growth, security, and stability on its own terms. By holding steady and maintaining close ties with the US, Russia, and the Europeans, India will seek to navigate a post-Ukraine conflict order not as a bystander, but as a shaper of the geopolitical landscape.