From Russia, with doubt

Instability in Moscow raises issues for India

The attempted mutiny by Russia’s largest private mercenary army, Wagner Group, headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has raised serious doubts about the regime’s grip on power. By extension, it raises crucial questions for India too. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, India has reaped the dividend of Moscow’s economic isolation from the G7 and its allies by buying larger quantities of oil at discounts of up to 30 per cent from the benchmark Brent crude index. In 2021, Russia accounted for just 3.4 per cent of India’s overseas crude oil purchases. By 2022, this proportion had gone up to 18 per cent, overtaking India’s traditional suppliers Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In May this year, that percentage had further risen to 45. This access, obtained despite protests from the US and Europe, has helped India contain its oil import bill and, in an election year, keep pump prices low. Little wonder, then, that New Delhi now wants its state-owned refiners to pursue long-term contracts with Russian suppliers and increase the level of purchases.

In the light of the Wagner debacle, it is debatable whether this strategy is worth pursuing. India imports 80 per cent of its crude oil requirements annually, and depending on one country that is in a state of political turbulence for almost half its overseas supplies is risky — more so, when the levers of supply rest with Russian state-owned entities, which are tightly controlled by Mr Putin personally. In Moscow, the unusual agreement involving forgiveness and a Belarussian exile for Mr Prigozhin, and a general pardon for Wagner’s mercenary soldiers do not suggest that a line has been drawn under the controversy. Multiple unknowns abound. Mr Prigozin’s virtually unopposed capture of the key Russian strategic base of Rostov-on-Don and unhindered march nearly 900 km north to Moscow’s outskirts suggest that the forces opposing Mr Putin may be more robust than is generally supposed. Will the Putin establishment be able to reassert itself? Many of these answers may be clearer over the coming weeks but the instability in Moscow suggests that it would be in India’s interests to rebalance its crude oil basket as an early risk-mitigating measure. The increasingly severe shortage of defence spares following the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent civil wars offers a salutary example of the perils of depending on unstable polities for critical supplies.

The Wagner debacle also highlights in extremis the perils of weakening the traditional monopoly on violence embedded in the modern state by creating competing private forces. This state-supported force, mobilised from Russian criminals and other societal flotsam, was initially raised to defend Russian assets in Syria and Africa. In Ukraine, they were used as frontline shock troops and, unsurprisingly, were credited with the bulk of the war crimes in captured territory. More to the point, Wagner’s presence has not significantly enhanced Russia’s territorial objectives in Ukraine. India’s own short-lived experience with similar forces in the Salwa Judum to combat Maoists in Chhattisgarh between 2005 and 2011 underlines the futility and inadvisability of such freelance creations. It proved disastrous in terms of gross human rights violations and ended up worsening the law and order crisis in the state.