Prime Minister Modi in Moscow? How the expected visit can be a geostrategic masterstroke

The media has been constantly talking about a possible visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Russia in July. The visit has not been officially confirmed by New Delhi yet, but preparations are reportedly underway in the Kremlin to welcome Prime Minister Modi on his first visit to the country since the war with Ukraine broke out two years ago. The visit will come almost a few weeks after the peace conference in Switzerland, where India has maintained a low-key presence so as not to alienate its good friend Russia. Interestingly, this will also be Prime Minister Modi’s first bilateral visit to any country after winning the electoral mandate for the third consecutive time.

The choice is significant because in his previous two terms in power after winning elections in 2014 and 2019, he had chosen neighbouring countries for his first bilateral visits. In 2014, he visited Bhutan and in 2019, he toured the Maldives and Sri Lanka, signalling his commitment to neighbourhood-first policy. This time, his first foreign visit was to Italy, but it was to attend the G7 summit. So, when the Russia tour takes place, it will technically be Modi 3.0’s first bilateral visit.

The visit is part of the annual India-Russia summit and comes nearly five years after Prime Minister Modi’s last visit to Russia in 2019, when he travelled to Vladivostok to attend the Eastern Economic Forum. Even the annual summit was suspended for two consecutive years, first due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then due to the conflict in Eastern Europe. Before that, President Putin had visited India in 2021 for the annual summit.

Although official confirmation of this upcoming visit is still awaited and until then the agenda also remains subject to speculation, one topic likely to be discussed during the visit would be a military logistics pact between the two countries. Just recently, Russia announced plans to strengthen military cooperation with India in the form of a military logistics agreement. The RELOS or Reciprocal Exchange Logistics Agreement is a long-pending pact between the two countries that would enable mutual logistical support to militaries during joint operations and long-distance missions. As part of this, Indian warships and aircraft can benefit from the Russian logistics network for refueling, repairs and maintenance, and any other similar requirements. This will not only reduce the cost of Indian missions but will also enable the Indian Army to undertake large-scale operations.

India has a similar agreement with several other countries such as Australia, Japan and France; and, more importantly, it has signed a logistics exchange memorandum of understanding with the United States.

Russia is in the process of finalizing the deal and progress on it can be expected during the Prime Minister’s upcoming visit. Once finalized, the deal will provide a significant advantage to India’s outreach efforts beyond its immediate neighborhood. More importantly, it will allow India to make inroads into the Arctic Ocean region, which has become a major geopolitical theater in recent years. The Arctic region is home to vast amounts of untapped natural resources that will be available once the ice melts due to climate change. China has shown early interest in the region, going so far as to declare itself a near-Arctic state, but unfortunately, the lines on the map do not play very well in favor of China’s claims. This has not yet stopped China from seeking to stake out a larger share of mineral resources, gain priority access to shipping lanes, or claim a greater stake in the region’s affairs.

In such a scenario, India would be an interesting player, as the RELOS deal would give it access to Russian logistics in the region, allowing it to make rapid progress. This would be a win-win equation for both countries, as India is willing to support Russian incursions in the Indian Ocean in exchange for a region that is its strategic backyard. Russia has set up a naval base in Sudan, a key country in the IOR, with the region being considered a key priority area in Russia’s 2015 maritime doctrine. Russia considers itself a great power for which supremacy in the oceans is a goal to be achieved. It had even explicitly mentioned India as its strategic partner of choice in this maritime doctrine.

Interestingly, the decision to visit Russia as Prime Minister Modi’s first choice of foreign visit as well as this logistical deal are both linked to a broader message to the global public. Of late, the growing proximity between Russia and China has led many Indian analysts to dismiss the importance of Russia to India’s strategic objectives. This is also the position of the West, which is concerned about Russia and China’s determination to pursue an unrestricted partnership. However, nothing could be further from the truth when one considers that the Beijing-Moscow bonhomie is set in stone. Putin’s visit to North Korea and Vietnam last week was closely watched by many as a direct challenge to the US alliance system in the region, but what some clearly failed to see is that it was also an assertion of Russia’s status as an independent power and not as China’s junior partner, as everyone seems to have claimed. North Korea and Vietnam both have a difficult history with China, not to mention Hanoi’s counterclaims in the South China Sea. So Putin’s move was almost certainly an attempt to show Beijing that Moscow also has options. This becomes even more significant given Russia’s displeasure with Beijing’s rapid incursions into Central Asia, Russia’s strategic backyard. Moscow has always wanted India to play a balancing role in the region; Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming visit and the logistics deal seem to be an extension of that. Remember, for Russia, China’s incursions into the Arctic region are also troubling. On the surface, the two countries have common cause in criticizing NATO’s involvement in the region. The Polar Silk Road project they signed in 2017 is also an example of Sino-Russian cooperation on the Northern Sea Route, an alternative connectivity passage between Europe and the Far East in addition to the Suez Canal route. But even here, Russia has not completely put its eggs in one basket. It is also actively seeking to woo India, as evidenced by the signing of the RELOS agreement.

For India, the deal and Modi’s visit are timely. In Modi 1.0, India shook off the non-aligned hangover to sign similar deals with the US. In Modi 2.0, India had begun to show strong signs of balancing with China, both internally and externally. Modi 3.0 follows a long effort by the Western interference machinery to topple a strong government in New Delhi. Days after coming to power, the Khalistan factor is still going strong, generating daily irritants in India’s relations with the West. The task for Modi 3.0, then, is to exploit all the available space to develop its own strengths without becoming totally dependent on any one player.

The choice of Russia as the first country to visit and the signing of a military pact will be significant assets. After all, no one can be trusted in global politics.

The author is a geopolitics and foreign policy commentator based in New Delhi. She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. You can follow her on X: @TrulyMonica. The views expressed in the above article are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.