By Robbin Laird
At the end of August, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, Narendra Modi did something leaders seldom do in front of cameras: he pressed Vladimir Putin to end his war. Despite the organization’s name, the summit was held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Modi told Putin, “We must move away from endless war towards an end to the war.” He also invoked Mahatma Gandhi and the Buddha, yet still called Putin a friend and posed for photographs with him.
Many commentators read the exchange as a marker of Indian realignment away from Moscow.
This article argues for a more precise reading. Modi’s words are weak evidence, because India has said versions of them before. The stronger evidence lies in procurement, energy and partnership choices. Those show a real but gradual, uneven process of hedging down Russian exposure in arms. That process is partly offset by a deeper energy entanglement that the war itself created. Putin’s war has narrowed Russia’s global reach. India’s response to that narrowing is layering rather than exit.
A summit of many audiences
The Bishkek gathering marked the SCO’s 25th anniversary. The organization has ten member states, including Russia, China, India, Iran and Pakistan. For Putin it was also one of the few venues open to him. Because of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, his personal diplomacy is largely confined to forums like the SCO and sometimes BRICS. He met Modi, Xi Jinping, Iran’s president and a string of Central Asian leaders, but the same account notes that Xi’s only confirmed bilateral meeting was with Putin.
Modi’s remarks worked on several audiences at once. In the plenary he criticized transnational terrorism without naming Pakistan, and he stressed respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. Observers read that as a rebuke of Russia’s war, of the Chinese corridor through Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and of Pakistan’s territorial claims. One sentence played to domestic opinion, Western capitals, the Global South and Beijing at once. That is multi-alignment as rhetoric.
The tone with Putin was equally calibrated. Putin used the meeting to highlight a sevenfold rise in Indian students in Russia, now about 40,000, and a 16% rise in tourism flows, along with cooperation at the UN, BRICS, G20 and SCO. The warm bilateral scaffolding stayed in place while Modi made his appeal for peace.
The pattern of India’s rhetoric
This is not new. At the 2022 Samarkand SCO summit, Modi told Putin at a televised meeting that “today’s era is not an era of war”; Putin responded that he knew India’s concerns and that Moscow would do everything to end the conflict as soon as possible, blaming Ukraine’s rejection of negotiations. At that same meeting Modi also spoke of an unbreakable friendship between the two countries. Three years later in Tianjin, the tone was different. Modi said India and Russia had walked shoulder to shoulder even in the most difficult situations, after Putin called him a dear friend and gave him a ride in his armored limousine. Bloomberg described it as a defiant show of ties, as Washington criticized New Delhi over its oil purchases.
The pattern continued in September. Eleven days after Bishkek, Putin was in New Delhi for the BRICS summit, his first trip abroad to a BRICS summit since 2022. At their bilateral, Modi and Putin spoke of raising trade from about $65 billion to $100 billion by 2030 and reviewed defense cooperation, and Putin invited Modi to the annual summit expected around the end of the year. Xi Jinping was also in Delhi, and Modi and Xi were expected to hold talks that could consolidate a thaw after the 2020 border tensions. Peace at the plenary and hospitality at the bilateral are two moves in the same game.
So Modi’s language tracks the occasion. In 2022 it emphasized peace, in 2025 solidarity under American pressure, and in 2026 peace again with the friendship intact. The words show how India wants to be seen. To see what India is doing, we have to look at what it buys, what it burns and whom it drills with.
The arms ledger
A long decline
The clearest structural evidence is SIPRI’s import data. Russia supplied 40 per cent of India’s arms imports in 2021–25, well below 51 per cent in 2016–20 and almost half its 70 per cent share in 2011–15. India remained the world’s second-largest arms importer, though its import volume fell 4.0 per cent between those two periods. SIPRI attributes the dip partly to India’s growing ability to design and produce its own weapons, while noting that domestic production still faces substantial delays. France now supplies about 29 per cent of India’s arms imports and Israel about 15 per cent.
Two caveats matter. First, the decline predates the Ukraine war. SIPRI’s 2024 report noted that 2019–23 was the first five-year period since 1960–64 in which Russia or the Soviet Union supplied less than half of India’s arms imports. The war accelerated an existing trend, driven by indigenization, Western competition and long-standing complaints about Russian equipment. Second, the trend has plateaued. SIPRI put Russia’s share at 36 per cent in 2020–24, so the latest window’s 40 per cent is a slight uptick. These are rolling five-year delivery figures that lag decisions, but they do not show the decline accelerating.
The Sukhoi question
The Su-57 is the strongest single indicator, but it needs to be described precisely. There was no signed new Sukhoi development deal for India to walk away from. India left the fifth-generation co-development program in April 2018, with Indian air force officials calling the Su-57 too expensive, poorly engineered and dependent on unreliable engines. That was the real “dropout.”
The 2026 event was a refusal of an offer. Moscow had offered the Su-57E with licensed domestic production and technology transfer, and New Delhi turned it down. That leaves Algeria as the only publicly identified export customer, though Russia says it has other undisclosed buyers. Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh did not name the Su-57 but said India would buy no new Sukhoi models in the near future, and that it would focus on modernizing its Su-30MKIs until the indigenous AMCA arrives. He said in a Moneycontrol interview that India was actively considering upgrading its existing Sukhois, calling them a success story, and the IAF is reportedly nearing a deal for 114 Rafales, 94 of them built locally.
The hardening happened over months. In March Singh had described the fighter question as open, with no final call on Russian, American or additional French offers. By late July the ambiguity had turned into a categorical rejection. The timing matters: the refusal came before Bishkek, and I have found no reporting that links it to Modi’s remarks there. The likelier drivers are capability, cost, the AMCA and the Rafale.
Indian systems on a Russian airframe
The decision to modernize the Su-30MKI rather than buy new is where the “Indian means” argument is strongest. The IAF plans to bring about 75 per cent of the fleet, over 200 aircraft out of roughly 272 in service, to a Super Sukhoi standard, targeting around 80 per cent indigenization and an operational life into the 2050s. Reporting describes a new Virupaksha gallium nitride AESA radar, domestic infrared search-and-track, new cockpit displays and mission computers from HAL and private firms, with a first prototype expected around 2028–29. India also plans to arm the upgraded jets with BrahMos missiles.
But the platform remains Russian in important respects. The Su-30MKI’s AL-31FP engines are built under license by HAL and represent technology from the 1980s and 1990s. In 2024 the defense ministry signed a Rs 26,000 crore deal with HAL for 240 of them. Russia has offered the Su-57’s AL-41 engine for the upgrade, and India is still evaluating its options. As of early 2025, no reports indicated that HAL planned to upgrade the engine. One July 2026 report, from a forum repost of Defence News India and so less reliable than the rest, says the flight-control architecture still runs on Russian design, with Russia agreed to a limited role in integration and certification support.
The fair summary is Indian sensors, computers and weapons on a Russian-designed airframe with Russian-lineage engines. That does cut Moscow’s share of value in each upgraded jet and gives India more control over future modifications. It does not remove Russian design from the core of the fleet for another generation.
The counter-evidence
If the story were a clean turn, India would not still be ordering from Russia. In late March 2026 the Defence Acquisition Council cleared proposals worth about $25 billion, including five additional S-400 air defense systems from Russia and a separate Rosoboronexport contract for Tunguska systems. One analysis describes this as a deliberate layering of sources rather than a clean transition. The relationship also remains anchored by a ten-year military cooperation framework signed in December 2025. India is diversifying while keeping Russia in the mix.
The energy counter-ledger
If arms show a gradual retreat, energy shows the opposite dynamic. Before the war Russian crude was about 2 per cent of India’s supply basket. Steep discounts from April 2022 transformed that, and Russia has been India’s largest source since 2023. In 2025–26 India imported $40.8 billion of Russian crude, about 30.3 per cent of its total crude imports. The war itself made India more dependent on Russia in this sector.
The recent volatility is instructive, and it points more to supply and sanctions than to strategy. The February tariff deal is the place to start. Washington had imposed a 50 per cent tariff on Indian goods, including a 25 per cent penalty for Russian oil purchases. On February 2 President Trump announced that the rate would fall to 18 per cent and said that Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian oil. The joint statement did not mention Russian oil, and the Indian government has neither confirmed nor denied the pledge, saying that its purchases are guided by national interest. An executive order provides that a 25 per cent tariff would return if India resumes such purchases. Vortexa read the February slowdown in Russian arrivals as deliberate diversification, and Reuters reported that major Indian refiners were avoiding Russian cargoes for March and April delivery.
Then the Iran war began on February 28 and the flow surged. Russian crude was 18.7 per cent of India’s imports in February and nearly 50 per cent by July, as India’s Middle East imports fell by 63 per cent. I have not found reporting that Washington has reimposed the duty. According to Kpler data reported by EcoNiti, imports hit a record 2.82 million bpd in July before falling 26.3 per cent to 2.08 million in August, when Chinese refiners outbid Indian buyers and Russia’s share of India’s crude fell from 55.9 to 45 per cent. The same report calls the trade sanctions-cyclical rather than structural. EcoNiti is an aggregator, so treat the July record with some caution, but the swing itself is consistent with other reports.
September’s first fortnight saw about 1.42 million bpd, roughly 30 per cent below the August average, which experts attributed to attacks on Russian oil infrastructure that have tightened supply, with Iraq emerging as a key alternative. The same report observes that New Delhi and Moscow discussed closer trade ties at the BRICS summit in mid-September, so the decline is not a policy signal. Washington may yet make it one. Proposed US legislation could empower the president to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on buyers of Russian energy.
Energy therefore cuts against a simple exposure-reduction story. India is a hedger that takes discounted Russian barrels when they flow and replaces them when supply or US pressure demands.
Japan and the Indo-Pacific hedge
The best evidence for where India is heading is who it trains with. Veer Guardian 26 runs from September 9 to 21 in Rajasthan, with three Japanese F-2 fighters and about 110 personnel from the 8th Air Wing, the first deployment of Japanese fighter jets to India. The first Veer Guardian was held in Japan in January 2023. Japan’s defense minister visited India in August, and both sides agreed to hold joint exercises. They also signed a memorandum of arrangement on maritime security cooperation that month, on top of the Dharma Guardian army exercise earlier this year. Dharma Guardian ran from February 24 to March 9 at Chaubattia in Uttarakhand.
The China framing is real but contested. Chinese state media portrayed the deployment as an attempt to strengthen coordination against Beijing. Japan’s latest defense white paper describes China’s military posture as an unprecedented strategic threat and stresses partnerships with India, Australia and the Philippines. Yet a retired Indian air marshal cautions against reading Indian exercises automatically through a China lens, since India drills bilaterally with many countries, while acknowledging that both countries have disagreements with China and that such events make Beijing wary. That caution is consistent with India’s longstanding reluctance to emphasize the military side of the Quad. Analysts have linked this hesitancy to the fact that India is the only Quad member with a land border with China.
Japan’s relationship to the Ukraine war is often overstated. It is a major supporter but not a combatant. Japan’s foreign minister reaffirmed sanctions and support for Ukraine in July, and Japan has been one of Ukraine’s leading supporters in Asia since 2022. By 2024 it had pledged nearly $12 billion, making it one of the top bilateral donors. Its help has been largely humanitarian and non-lethal, though it has included military supplies ranging from bulletproof vests to surveillance drones. Tokyo has also sanctioned entities in India. In 2024 it restricted trade with firms in China, India, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan over alleged support for Russia’s war. India is deepening defense ties with a partner whose government sanctions Russia and has penalized Indian firms over it, which is a clear example of compartmentalized hedging.
Russia’s shrinking reach
The broader argument is that Putin’s war has reduced Russia’s reach, and India illustrates part of it. On arms exports, the evidence is strong. Moscow’s flagship fifth-generation export has one publicly identified customer, and its largest historical arms client is refusing the offer, partly because of industrial strain under sanctions. Commentators also note setbacks in Russian influence from Syria to Venezuela to Mali and a leader whose travel is constrained by an ICC warrant.
But India also shows the limits of that argument. The war reduced Russia’s arms role while increasing its energy role. China has become a rival buyer, with Chinese refiners winning Russian cargoes with freight-advantaged Northern Sea Route access. My own inference is that a weakened Russia leans harder on China, India’s principal strategic competitor, and that gives New Delhi an extra reason to hedge while it still has leverage. Moscow needs India as a customer, a summit partner and an audience. That lets Modi speak plainly at Bishkek without breaking anything.
A middle power?
The “middle power changing course” framing deserves scrutiny.
India’s own preferred vocabulary is strategic autonomy or multi-alignment.
Many analysts would call it a major or swing power because it has options that true middle powers lack: a large domestic defense industrial base, a market that every supplier wants, and a seat in the SCO, BRICS and the Quad at once.
The diversification thesis holds either way. But “changing course” implies a break that the evidence doesn’t show. The better image is a large ship altering heading by a few degrees a year while keeping its engines running.
What would prove the turn
The claim of a strategic shift can be tested against a handful of near-term developments:
- The Rafale decision. Signing the 114-jet deal, with 94 built in India, would confirm that the Su-57 refusal was part of a coherent fighter strategy.
- S-400 execution. Follow-through on the five additional systems approved in March would show Russian air defense remains a sustained priority. Cancellation or delay would suggest otherwise.
- The Super Sukhoi engine choice. Selecting the AL-41 would deepen Russian lineage in the fleet. An indigenous or non-Russian alternative would mark a real break.
- Russian crude after supply recovers. If imports stay depressed once infrastructure and freight constraints ease, the shift is strategic. If they rebound, September was an outage, not a policy.
- The US tariff track. The February executive order provides for reimposing a 25 per cent duty if India resumes Russian purchases, and separate legislation would allow tariffs of up to 100 per cent on buyers of Russian energy. Either would force a choice that India has so far been able to defer.
- Follow-through with Japan. Whether Veer Guardian becomes a regular fighter exercise and whether the maritime arrangement produces operational content will show if the relationship goes beyond signaling.
If these break in the same direction, the turn is real. If they don’t, Modi’s words at Bishkek were mostly diplomacy.
Conclusion
Modi’s appeal to Putin belongs to a long tradition of Indian statements that combine moral positioning with practical continuity. It is best read as a signal about how India wants to be seen in a world where Russia matters less as a supplier and more as one hedge among several against China. The deeds show a country that is thinning Russian dependence in arms at the margin, keeping the installed base alive with Indian sensors and weapons, and taking advantage of Russian oil when it is cheap. It is building military ties with Japan, France and others while refusing to sever ties with Moscow. Putin’s war has reduced Russia’s reach, but it has done so unevenly. It has weakened Moscow’s position as an arms partner while entrenching it as an energy supplier, and India is managing both at once.
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Arms trade and the Sukhoi question
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Energy
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Vortexa. “India likely to maintain Russian oil purchases.” March 3, 2026. https://www.vortexa.com/insights/india-maintain-russian-oil-imports
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Japan, the Indo-Pacific and Ukraine
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South China Morning Post. “What Japan’s coming fighter jet deployment to India means for China.” August 29, 2026. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3365697/what-japans-coming-fighter-jet-deployment-india-means-china
BharatShakti. “Japan to Deploy F-2 Fighters to India for Joint Military Exercise, China Raises Alarm.” August 7, 2026. https://bharatshakti.in/japan-to-deploy-f-2-fighters-to-india-for-joint-military-exercise-china-raises-alarm/
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Kyodo via Inquirer. “Japan pledges continued support for Ukraine, sanctions on Russia.” July 2, 2026. https://globalnation.inquirer.net/329531/japan-pledges-continued-support-for-ukraine-sanctions-on-russia
CSIS. “Japan’s Leadership Role on Ukraine.” September 25, 2024. https://www.csis.org/analysis/japans-leadership-role-ukraine
National Bureau of Asian Research. “Japan’s Response to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Shaping Indo-Pacific Security.” https://www.nbr.org/publication/japans-response-to-the-russia-ukraine-conflict-shaping-indo-pacific-security/
Al Jazeera. “Japan sanctions China-based firms accused of supporting war in Ukraine.” June 21, 2024. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/6/21/japan-sanctions-china-based-firms-accused-of-supporting-war-in-ukraine
For our analytical examination of middle power theory, see the following: