As Russia comes to India’s aid amid the global energy crisis, a familiar mantra has resurfaced among officials and political analysts – that Moscow is New Delhi’s “all weather-friend”.
Such a stance is anchored by deep strategic interests, with both countries viewing each other as vital to their balancing between China and an increasingly erratic United States, according to observers.
On Friday, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said Moscow was well-positioned to ramp up oil and LNG supplies to India amid the energy supply chaos triggered by the Iran war.
Manturov, who was speaking at the end of a two-day visit to India, held meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and other Indian ministers in Delhi to discuss trade, energy and industrial cooperation.
Delhi is reportedly in talks with Moscow to restart direct liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from Russia for the first time since the 2022 Ukraine war, while Indian refiners have renewed big purchases of Russian crude, securing 60 million barrels for April.
Bilateral ties have been under duress since August, when US President Donald Trump imposed a penalty tariff on Delhi for buying crude oil from Moscow, in a move aimed at weaning India away from the Russian energy sector.
On April 2, Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman for Delhi’s external affairs ministry, hailed the “deep-rooted, time-tested relationship” between the two countries while talking about the visit by Manturov and other Russian officials, stressing their cooperation across trade, defence and strategic sectors.
Speaking on local TV stations in recent days, several Indian analysts have hailed Russia as India’s “trusted friend”. Their comments echo those of Modi, who called Moscow an “all-weather friend” during his visit to Russia in July 2024 and in December last year, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Delhi to attend the two countries’ annual bilateral summit.
In a social media post on Thursday, Modi said both sides had followed up on the 2025 meeting by furthering cooperation in “trade, fertilisers, connectivity and people-to-people ties”.
Former Indian diplomat Anil Trigunayat said ties between Delhi and Moscow had always flourished by being “a friend in need is a friend indeed” to each other. Trigunayat, who has served as Delhi’s deputy chief of mission in Moscow, said both countries had mutual interests in the energy sector.
“India and Russia ties remain trusted and time-tested despite occasional global headwinds. The old dictum of friend in need is friendship indeed applies potently in this case,” he said.
At a conference focused on the bilateral relationship held in Moscow last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lauded India’s “independent foreign policy”, saying the “time-tested” friendship between the two countries served as a model on interstate relations based on mutual trust and respect.
Ivan Lidarev, a visiting research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, said it was difficult to speak of “true friendship” in international relations, given that it was typically driven by interests rather than sentiment.
“Nevertheless, India-Russia relations represent a strong but progressively more limited partnership. This relationship transcends the specifics of the current situation, although the Iran war has clearly pushed New Delhi to seek closer ties with Moscow,” Lidarev said.
Both countries share a vision of a multipolar global order centred on the sovereignty of states, a greater role for the Global South, clear spheres of interest for major powers and the importance of multilateral institutions, according to Lidarev.
India and Russia also saw a need to constrain China’s growing power and considered each other as vital partners in balancing Beijing through Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Lidarev said. Without the partnership, Russia would have to lean closer to China, and India would have to turn to an increasingly unreliable US, he added.
Manturov’s visit came after India’s defence ministry signed a US$46.9 million deal with Russia’s Rosoboronexport last month to buy an air defence missile system.
Rajan Kumar, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of International Studies, said keeping Moscow close to Delhi had helped prevent a stronger alignment between Russia and China, while keeping Pakistan at arm’s length.
Kumar said Russia also relied on India due to its market size. “Despite sanctions from the West [following the Ukraine war], Russia only survived because India and China continued to trade with Moscow. So, they [Russia] know the importance of this relationship,” he added.
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Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, and a former Pentagon official, said Moscow was capitalising on the Middle East conflict to bolster ties with Delhi, noting that Russia had previously defaulted on contracts to supply India with essential weapons.
“New Delhi and the Kremlin may have common ground in frustration with the United States, but India’s future is probably one of whiplash as both Trump and Putin continue to act provocatively and unilaterally,” Rubin said.
Rahul Wankhede, a research analyst at Delhi-based Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, referred to the deal with Rosoboronexport, saying India and Russia had been cooperating in the defence sector for a long time.
Many of India’s weapons are still Russian in origin, and Delhi has to continue turning to Moscow for spare parts, maintenance and upgrades, according to Wankhede.
At the same time, the US was monitoring the defence ties between Russia and India and had previously threatened sanctions over their cooperation, Wankhede said. Nonetheless, Washington had stopped short of disrupting its defence ties with Delhi given “India’s strategic importance”, and this was set to continue.
On Manturov’s comments, Wankhede said India’s continued engagement with Russia in the energy sector was driven by price advantages, supply security, and Moscow’s limited refining capacity, not political alignment.
“The reality is that Russian oil entering India is not only for domestic consumption. Much of it is refined and exported to Europe and other countries. This underscores a broader geoeconomic arrangement where multiple actors, such as India, Russia, and even Western economies, have stakes in keeping energy flows functional despite sanctions.”
Source: South China Morning Post