Narendra Modi still sees uses in not offending Vladimir Putin
DELHI IS A crowded place these days, but not from its crush of cars, auto-rickshaws and stray cows. Instead, India’s capital is flooded with visiting diplomats and statesmen, all vying for India’s love, or at least its attention.
On every vote at the UN since Russia’s tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24th, India has abstained. It has not condemned Russia by name. But nor has it shied from calling this a war rather than a “special operation”, as Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s deadpan foreign minister, gamely corrected an Indian journalist in Delhi on April 1st. Russia’s state-throttled media tries to paint India as a staunch cheerleader of Vladimir Putin, but struggles to find pukka Indians to parrot such tosh.
While much of India’s establishment does cherish musty memories of cold-war “non-alignment”, when the Soviet Union backed the country against an American-supported Pakistan and a looming Chinese dragon, many also cite pragmatic contemporary reasons for staying off the West’s anti-Putin bandwagon. Most obviously, India depends on Russia for most of its arms.
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