India-Russia Relations Face More Trouble
India and Russia cancelled their annual summit for the first time in two decades. Is China the reason why?
December 31, 2020
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, left, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, pose for a photo on the sidelines of a meeting of Foreign Ministers of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Commonwealth of Independent States and Collective Security Treaty Organization Member States in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, September 10. 2020.
Credit: Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP
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India and Russia have gone through several ups and downs in their decades-old bilateral relationship. The two appear at present to be going through a tricky phase. The two-decade old India-Russia annual summit was cancelled for the first time. A news report in India suggested that the postponement was the result of “severe reservations on New Del
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Russia’s unofficial response to India did everything right
Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin visit a shipyard. PHOTO: AFP
Russia’s unofficial response to India did everything right
But everything might not work out perfectly comes to Russia’s plan to bring China and Pakistan closer to India
Andrey Kortunov, the Director General of the prestigious Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), published what can be interpreted as Russia’s unofficial response to India as an Op-Ed for China’s
Global Times. The title of his article gets straight to the point by observing that “Russia moves East, India West, straining ties”. Unlike his two Indian counterparts, Observer Research Foundation expert Harsh V. Pant and former Indian Ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal, Mr. Kortunov is objective, mature, and respectful. Nothing that he wrote could reasonably be interpreted as offensive to the Indian side.
Why are former Indian diplomats really unhappy with Russia?
These anti-Russian statements come just two weeks after Russia agreed to join Pakistan’s AMAN-2021 naval exercises
The unprecedented surprise postponement of the annual Russia-India Summit for the first time since this yearly tradition began two decades ago has elicited very strong reactions from current and former Indian diplomats that threaten to worsen relations between these two strategic partners. Popular Indian media outlet
ThePrint published an article about this on Wednesday titled “
” which quotes some unnamed sources, former diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar who was posted in Russia in the early 2000s, and former Indian Ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal.