A (Love?) Story of An Elephant and A Bear-2

Hello friends, as we discussed last time, by 1991, the clouds of doubt hung over the Indo-Russian relations. The end of the cold war left no significance to Non-Alignment Movement. More than that, Russian policy circles were divided on future strategy.

The most dominant group of Andrew Koyzev and Boris Yeltsin was Pro-Western and had strong reservations about India.

In this atmosphere, India found itself in an economic crisis. The only option left was to start getting the attention of USA and its help to come over the crisis.

USA started doing arm twisting of both Russia and India.It put pressure on Russia to cancel the cryogenic engine deal with India(1993). Pakistan entered in the scene as both US and Russia found it useful to deal with Mujahiddins in Afghanistan.

The conundrum was of a very serious nature for India. PM P.V.Narsimha Rao decided to move forward with precision and caution. All party consensus was built to take efforts to woo Russia for its importance from a defense angle. USA was to be approached for economic investments.

The notable thing here is that P.V. actively took consult and cooperation of the leader of Opposition, Atal Bihari Vajpayee during these efforts. Vajpayee also led a delegation to Russia sending a message that politically India stands united.

Few Years later. Pro western group was out of power. Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer took over as a President of Russia(1999).

Putin era saw an opportunity to improve relations especially by selling arms to India to recover its economy which was in shackles since the 1990s. Putin initiated Multi-Vector Foreign Policy- entering into negotiations with multiple countries at the same time.

India- Russia entered into Strategic Partnership in 2000 and in 2010, it was upgraded to Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership. 

This decade also saw cooperation on multilateral forums like BRICS, UN, etc. Annual Summit is the highest level institutional mechanism to discuss, debate, and dialogue mutual concerns. The Summit also was fully functional in these years and remains so.

The decade gave the status of Time Tested Partnership to Indo- Russia relations. This remains so. However, the rise of China and Russia's Going Closer approach towards China has cast clouds of doubt. India's closeness with USA added more seriousness to the game.

The Classic Dilemma of a hug
(Source-Satish Acharya)

In the current state of affairs, how India is playing out the game with Russia or vice versa, Lets see in the next article.