Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kyiv on 23 August, becoming the first Indian prime minister to visit Ukraine since diplomatic relations were established between the two countries in 1992. The symbolism was unusually strong because the visit came only weeks after Modi travelled to Moscow and embraced Vladimir Putin, a meeting that angered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy because it coincided with a deadly Russian missile strike that hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv. Modi’s arrival in Ukraine therefore was not simply another bilateral visit. It was an attempt to demonstrate that India’s relationship with Russia does not require political distance from Ukraine and that New Delhi intends to remain engaged with both sides of the war. During talks with Zelenskyy, Modi reiterated support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, argued that the conflict must eventually be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy, and offered India as a possible participant in efforts towards peace.
The visit is best understood through the concept India itself prefers: strategic autonomy. That term is often treated as a polite synonym for neutrality, but the two are not the same. Neutrality implies avoiding alignment with competing sides. Strategic autonomy means avoiding dependence on any one side strongly enough that national policy becomes constrained by another state’s preferences. India can therefore purchase Russian oil, rely heavily on Russian-origin military equipment, expand defence and technology cooperation with the United States, participate in the Quad with Japan and Australia, maintain relations with Iran and simultaneously deepen bilateral engagement with Ukraine. The apparent inconsistency is not necessarily a failure of foreign policy. It is the mechanism through which autonomy is produced.
This is easier to understand if foreign policy is treated as a portfolio problem rather than a friendship hierarchy. Investors diversify because concentrating all assets in one company creates vulnerability even when that company currently performs well. States face a similar problem. Depend too heavily on one military supplier and that supplier acquires leverage. Depend entirely on one export market and access to that market becomes political pressure. Join one geopolitical bloc so completely that all alternative relationships deteriorate and policy options narrow. India has historically responded by maintaining several relationships simultaneously, even when those partners disagree with one another. Diversification reduces efficiency in some cases because different weapons systems, regulatory relationships and diplomatic commitments are harder to coordinate. It also reduces exposure to any single external power.
Russia remains particularly important because the India-Russia relationship was built over decades, including extensive Soviet support for India during the Cold War and enormous defence ties after it. A significant proportion of India’s existing military inventory remains of Soviet or Russian origin, meaning spare parts, maintenance and ammunition create dependencies that cannot be replaced simply by announcing a geopolitical realignment. India has diversified increasingly towards France, Israel and the United States, but military supply chains are stocks rather than flows. A country may buy fewer Russian systems today while remaining dependent on equipment purchased twenty years ago.
This creates path dependence. Past procurement decisions constrain present diplomacy because weapon systems remain in service for decades. A fighter aircraft purchased in 2000 needs spare parts in 2024. A submarine needs maintenance. Missile systems require specialised components and training. The foreign-policy cost of switching suppliers is therefore much larger than changing which company supplies ordinary consumer goods. India cannot evaluate Russia only according to current preferences because previous governments already embedded Russian technology inside Indian military capability.
That dependence partly explains why New Delhi rejected Western pressure to sever economic relationships with Moscow after the 2022 invasion. But economics created another incentive. Western sanctions and Europe’s attempt to reduce dependence on Russian energy pushed Moscow to sell crude oil at significant discounts, and Indian refiners dramatically expanded purchases. By mid-2024, India had become one of the largest buyers of Russian oil, at points overtaking China as the top purchaser. Indian officials argue that these purchases are commercially rational and that keeping Russian oil on global markets has also helped prevent international prices from rising even further.
That argument deserves more attention than the simplistic claim that buying Russian oil automatically means politically supporting Russia. Oil is globally traded. Removing several million barrels of Russian supply entirely from world markets would reduce total availability and potentially raise prices internationally, including for European economies attempting to sanction Moscow. This is why the G7 eventually created a price-cap mechanism rather than attempting to eliminate Russian exports completely: the objective was to preserve supply while reducing Moscow’s revenue per barrel. India could therefore argue that purchasing discounted crude is compatible with the broader economic objective of maintaining market supply while weakening Russia’s unit revenue.
The counterargument is equally important. Money is fungible. Revenue from oil sales supports the Russian state, and the Russian state finances the war. Even discounted exports therefore generate resources unavailable if the oil remained unsold. India cannot credibly claim that energy trade has no geopolitical consequence merely because refiners purchase according to price. Commercial rationality does not erase strategic externalities. A transaction can be economically attractive to the buyer while affecting the seller’s capacity to conduct war.
The meaningful question is therefore not whether Indian oil purchases are “pro-Russian” in some moral binary. It is whether the economic benefit India receives is worth the diplomatic and strategic costs generated by helping maintain Russian revenue. New Delhi has effectively answered yes, largely because energy affordability matters enormously to a developing economy importing most of its crude oil. Lower oil prices reduce inflation, transport costs, the import bill and fiscal pressure associated with fuel subsidies or taxation. The distributional consequences therefore reach hundreds of millions of Indian households rather than remaining an abstract foreign-policy advantage.
This exposes one of the largest differences between the way wealthy and developing countries experience sanctions. A rich European government may accept higher energy prices as part of the cost of punishing aggression while subsidising vulnerable households. India has a much lower per-capita income and faces a substantially different fiscal constraint. A large oil-price increase absorbs income that might otherwise finance food, housing, education or investment. Asking India to treat energy sourcing primarily as a geopolitical signal therefore means asking a much poorer population to bear some of the economic cost of a European security crisis.
That does not make India’s choices morally immune from criticism. It explains why the opportunity cost of sanctions is distributed unequally across countries. International coalitions become harder to sustain when compliance costs vary substantially. A policy appearing principled in Brussels may appear economically regressive in Delhi because the households paying the cost possess far less income.
This is one reason many governments across the Global South resisted Western pressure to interpret the Ukraine war as requiring complete diplomatic alignment. Most condemned or expressed concern about violations of sovereignty while remaining unwilling to participate fully in sanctions. Their position was not necessarily admiration for Russia. It often reflected a broader resistance to the expectation that conflicts defined primarily by European security priorities should determine their entire economic and diplomatic policy.
India has articulated this particularly clearly because strategic autonomy is already embedded in its foreign-policy tradition. During the Cold War, India helped build the Non-Aligned Movement, but non-alignment itself was never complete neutrality. India maintained close defence relations with the Soviet Union while formally remaining outside both superpower alliances. Contemporary strategic autonomy updates the same instinct for a multipolar system. The objective is not equal distance from Washington, Moscow and Beijing. Equal distance would be irrational when threats and opportunities differ. The objective is decision-making independence.
This distinction becomes obvious through China. India has no reason to remain equally distant from China and the United States because China represents a direct territorial and strategic competitor while the United States increasingly provides technology, investment and balancing power useful to India. Indian and Chinese troops have confronted one another along their disputed Himalayan frontier, including the deadly Galwan Valley clash in 2020. Beijing maintains a close relationship with Pakistan, expands naval capability in the Indian Ocean and possesses far greater economic and military resources than India. New Delhi therefore has structural incentives to deepen cooperation with Washington.
Yet becoming a formal American ally would create another dependency. Washington’s strategic priorities could change, domestic American politics could alter commitments and US sanctions or export controls could become leverage over Indian behaviour. India therefore participates in the Quad while rejecting the idea that the Quad constitutes an Asian NATO. It buys American and French military equipment while retaining Russian systems. It cooperates with Washington on China while disagreeing over Russia. This is autonomy through selective alignment.
The Russia relationship itself has become increasingly connected to China, which creates a long-term problem for India. Russia’s isolation from Western markets after 2022 has pushed Moscow into deeper economic and strategic dependence on Beijing. From India’s perspective, this is uncomfortable because one historical partner is becoming increasingly reliant on India’s principal strategic competitor. Maintaining engagement with Russia can therefore serve an Indian balancing objective: prevent Moscow’s relationship with Beijing from becoming completely exclusive.
Whether India actually possesses enough leverage to accomplish this is uncertain. China is vastly more important economically to Russia than India, particularly after Western sanctions. Beijing buys enormous quantities of Russian energy, supplies manufactured goods and provides diplomatic support. India’s ability to pull Russia away from China therefore is limited. But complete disengagement would make the outcome even more certain by removing one of Russia’s remaining major non-Western partners capable of maintaining an independent relationship with Moscow.
India’s policy can consequently be interpreted through hedging. Hedging differs from balancing because the state does not fully commit against a potential threat. It maintains cooperation with multiple actors while preparing for adverse scenarios. India hedges against Chinese power through the United States and other Indo-Pacific partners. It hedges against excessive Western dependence by maintaining Russia. It hedges against energy shocks through diversified suppliers. It hedges against diplomatic isolation by presenting itself as a bridge between geopolitical blocs.
Modi’s visit to Kyiv is part of that last strategy. Ukraine and many Western governments had become increasingly critical of India’s continued closeness to Russia, particularly after Modi’s July Moscow visit. Kyiv therefore allows India to demonstrate that its Russia relationship does not mean accepting every Russian position. The India-Ukraine joint statement reaffirmed respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law, while both governments expressed interest in deepening bilateral relations and eventually developing them towards a strategic partnership.
This is diplomatically significant because those principles implicitly conflict with Russia’s annexation claims over Ukrainian territory. India has not recognised Russia’s claimed annexations. New Delhi has repeatedly called for respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity while abstaining on several UN resolutions condemning Moscow. This creates a carefully constructed position: reject the territorial principle underlying Russia’s invasion without joining the coalition attempting to isolate Russia completely.
Critics call this ambiguity opportunistic. There is truth in that description insofar as India wants benefits from relationships that are themselves in conflict. But almost all foreign policy is opportunistic in the literal sense that governments seek opportunities improving national welfare. The relevant standard should not be whether India chooses its interests, because every state does. It should be whether those interests are pursued consistently enough with international principles that Indian diplomacy remains credible.
This is where Ukraine presents a challenge. India frequently emphasises sovereignty when discussing Pakistan, China and its own territorial disputes. A global norm against changing borders by force therefore is strongly in India’s interest. If powerful states can revise territorial arrangements militarily and then normalise the result, India faces an international environment less favourable to its own security. New Delhi therefore has a strategic reason, independent of Western pressure, to oppose the precedent created by Russia’s invasion.
At the same time, India does not want the principle applied through a mechanism requiring permanent hostility towards Russia. This produces the country’s preferred formula: the war should end through dialogue, but the settlement should respect sovereignty and territorial integrity. Modi repeated the first component in Kyiv, urging Zelenskyy to engage in talks and offering Indian support for diplomatic efforts. Zelenskyy emphasised the second, arguing that peace must be just and consistent with Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The difficulty is that “dialogue” is not a policy outcome. Negotiations produce peace only when the parties believe the expected value of agreement exceeds the expected value of continued war. Russia currently occupies substantial Ukrainian territory and may believe continued fighting can improve its position. Ukraine has demonstrated through its Kursk offensive that it is still capable of imposing new costs and may believe additional military pressure can improve its own bargaining position. Telling both governments to negotiate therefore does not solve the underlying distributional disagreement.
This is the ripeness problem in conflict resolution. Negotiations become productive when both sides perceive a mutually hurting stalemate or when outside actors alter incentives enough that settlement becomes preferable. Mediators can facilitate communication, propose formulas and provide guarantees. They cannot create overlapping interests where none exist.
India’s potential mediating role therefore depends on what it can offer beyond diplomatic symbolism. New Delhi possesses a valuable relationship with Russia, growing credibility with Ukraine, influence among developing countries and enough strategic weight that both sides take its position seriously. It does not possess the financial leverage of the United States or European Union, the military leverage of NATO or enough influence over Moscow to compel territorial concessions. India could therefore become a facilitator more plausibly than a decisive mediator.
That role still has value. Conflicts require channels through which messages can travel when direct trust collapses. States maintaining relationships with both sides become useful precisely because full alignment would eliminate that access. Turkey has played this role repeatedly in the war despite being a NATO member, helping facilitate the Black Sea grain arrangement and prisoner exchanges while maintaining extensive relations with both Russia and Ukraine. India could potentially occupy another part of the same diplomatic space.
But access creates responsibility. A state presenting itself as a bridge eventually needs to demonstrate that it can carry something across the bridge. If India repeatedly calls for peace without advancing a credible diplomatic mechanism, “dialogue” becomes a rhetorical position designed principally to preserve flexibility rather than change outcomes.
This is why mediation credibility depends on additionality, the same concept used in industrial policy. Did India’s involvement produce communication, guarantees or proposals that would not otherwise have existed? If not, mediation branding may improve India’s diplomatic image without altering the war.
India also needs to overcome Ukrainian distrust created by the Moscow visit. Zelenskyy publicly criticised Modi’s embrace of Putin after the Russian strike on Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in July. Symbolism matters intensely during war because leaders use diplomatic interactions as evidence of international legitimacy. A photograph of Modi embracing Putin therefore did not remain a bilateral gesture. Ukraine interpreted it through the context of civilians being killed by Russian missiles.
Modi’s interaction with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, including a visit to a memorial for children killed in the war, functioned partly as symbolic rebalancing. Diplomatic gestures cannot reverse military events, but they communicate which suffering a government recognises. Strategic autonomy requires maintaining enough emotional and political sensitivity that engagement with one side does not appear indifference towards the other’s losses.
This is particularly important for India’s claim to represent or speak for parts of the Global South. New Delhi increasingly presents itself as a country capable of connecting Western powers with developing states, demonstrated through the G20 presidency in 2023 and its successful effort to bring the African Union into the G20 as a permanent member. That diplomatic identity depends on India appearing capable of independent judgement rather than simply maximising transactional advantage.
The Ukraine war therefore becomes a test of whether strategic autonomy can generate diplomatic public goods. If India uses autonomy only to purchase cheap oil and avoid sanctions, critics can describe the policy as free-riding on an international system whose territorial rules India benefits from. If India uses its unusual access to support negotiations, humanitarian measures or reconstruction, autonomy becomes more than non-alignment; it becomes diplomatic capacity.
The distinction matters for India’s future status. New Delhi wants reform of the UN Security Council and a larger role in global governance. Great-power status is not conferred merely by population or GDP. It also depends on whether other states believe a country can help manage crises extending beyond its immediate national interest. India therefore has incentives to demonstrate problem-solving power, not simply balancing skill.
Ukraine also offers economic opportunities in reconstruction. The two countries discussed cooperation in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure and other areas during Modi’s visit. India possesses large construction, pharmaceutical and technology sectors capable of participating in eventual Ukrainian reconstruction. Diplomatic engagement now therefore can create economic relationships later.
This should not be reduced cynically to commercial opportunism. Reconstruction necessarily requires companies willing to build infrastructure, provide medicine and invest. Economic incentives can reinforce diplomatic relationships. States frequently sustain political partnerships because businesses and institutions develop constituencies favouring continued cooperation.
This is interdependence as stabilisation. India-Russia relations survived partly because military, energy and diplomatic networks became deeply embedded. India-Ukraine relations remain much thinner. Expanding trade and institutional cooperation creates more actors inside both countries with interests in maintaining the relationship after the immediate war fades.
India’s pharmaceutical industry is particularly relevant because affordable generic medicines are one of the country’s strongest global economic capabilities. Agricultural cooperation also matters because Ukraine is a major food exporter and India a huge agricultural economy. The strategic relationship therefore does not need to be constructed entirely around war mediation.
This is a useful foreign-policy principle: bilateral relations become more resilient when they contain several independent pillars. If India-Ukraine relations depend only on Russia, every interaction becomes hostage to the war. Trade, education, pharmaceuticals, technology and reconstruction can create a relationship with its own logic.
The same diversification principle India applies globally can therefore be applied bilaterally.
Another important component is India’s refusal to sign the final communiqué of the June Switzerland peace summit, despite attending. New Delhi argued that any sustainable peace process requires participation by both Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine wants future peace meetings to include broader Global South participation and eventually Russia itself. Modi’s Kyiv visit therefore places India in a potentially useful position around a second summit.
The underlying principle is sensible: a settlement cannot bind a major combatant absent from the negotiation. Yet refusing to endorse a communiqué can also weaken principles the summit attempted to establish, including nuclear safety, food security and territorial integrity. India again prioritised procedural inclusivity over coalition alignment.
This illustrates two competing theories of peace diplomacy. One strategy first builds an international coalition around principles and then uses that coalition to pressure the adversary. The other attempts to construct a negotiating framework acceptable enough that the adversary participates from the beginning. Ukraine and many Western states have leaned towards the first; India towards the second.
Neither guarantees success.
Coalition-building can strengthen bargaining power while hardening the excluded side.
Inclusivity can bring the adversary into the room while requiring concessions before negotiations even begin.
The optimal sequencing depends on whether pressure or reassurance is currently the binding constraint.
The Kursk offensive complicates this further because Russia has reacted by arguing that negotiations are less plausible while Ukrainian troops operate on Russian territory. Ukraine may believe the opposite: the offensive creates exactly the leverage necessary to make future negotiations less asymmetric. This reveals the recurring paradox that military escalation can sometimes be undertaken for bargaining purposes rather than instead of bargaining. States fight partly to change the terms available at the eventual negotiating table.
India’s call for immediate dialogue therefore encounters actors who may still believe battlefield changes improve their negotiating positions faster than diplomacy does. Mediators cannot simply wish away that belief. They need to alter expected payoffs.
That could involve security guarantees.
Sanctions relief.
Territorial arrangements.
Reconstruction financing.
Prisoner exchanges.
Nuclear and food-security agreements.
Each changes one component of the bargaining space.
India alone cannot provide all of them.
This is why any meaningful Indian mediation would probably need to operate as part of a networked diplomatic process rather than as a solitary broker. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, European states, the United States and others possess different forms of leverage. A multipolar peace process may therefore resemble the emerging international system itself: no single power controls enough resources to determine the outcome, so several states contribute different capabilities.
India is unusually well positioned for such diplomacy because it sits across several networks simultaneously. It belongs to the Quad with Western-aligned Indo-Pacific democracies. It belongs to BRICS with Russia and China. It participates in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. It has expanding relationships with Gulf states and Israel while maintaining support for Palestinian statehood. It purchases Russian arms and conducts increasingly sophisticated military exercises with the United States.
This institutional overlap looks incoherent only under the assumption that international politics should organise into rigid blocs.
India’s strategy assumes the opposite.
The emerging system is a network order, where states can share membership in one institution while competing in another.
Russia and India cooperate in BRICS.
India and China both belong to BRICS while confronting one another along the Himalayas.
India and the United States cooperate through the Quad while disagreeing over Russia.
The UAE works closely with Washington while deepening economic ties with China.
Multipolarity therefore does not mean a return to nineteenth-century isolated poles. It means dense overlapping alignments in which states attempt to maximise leverage by remaining connected to several centres simultaneously.
Strategic autonomy becomes especially valuable in such a system because optionality itself is power. If Washington knows India has no alternative partner, American bargaining leverage increases. If Moscow knows India cannot diversify military procurement, Russian leverage increases. If both know New Delhi has alternatives, India can negotiate better terms.
The economic analogy is monopsony and monopoly. A buyer dependent on one seller faces higher prices. A seller dependent on one buyer accepts lower prices. Diversification improves bargaining position by creating credible outside options.
India’s foreign policy is therefore partly about constructing outside options.
The United States becomes an alternative to Russian technology.
Russia becomes an alternative source of energy and defence relationships.
France becomes another defence partner.
Gulf states provide investment and energy.
Japan provides infrastructure.
No relationship needs to supply everything.
This strategy also creates costs because partners may distrust a country unwilling to choose clearly during crises. The United States can ask why advanced technology should be shared with India while New Delhi maintains close Russian defence relations. Russia can wonder whether deepening US-India military cooperation eventually threatens its own interests. Ukraine can question India’s credibility while Russian oil purchases continue.
Strategic autonomy therefore requires constant credibility management. A state must remain close enough to each partner that the relationship remains valuable while distant enough that no partner believes it controls policy.
Modi’s Moscow and Kyiv visits one month apart are almost a visual representation of this balancing act.
The question is whether the balance remains sustainable as geopolitical competition intensifies.
Strategic autonomy is easiest when major powers tolerate ambiguity.
It becomes harder when they demand alignment.
A severe Taiwan crisis, direct NATO-Russia confrontation or another India-China border conflict could force choices that peacetime diplomacy can postpone.
This is the optionality limit. Diversification increases freedom until two partners’ demands become mutually exclusive.
India should therefore use the current period to reduce dependencies that would constrain future choices. Diversifying military equipment away from excessive Russian reliance is sensible not because Russia must become an adversary but because autonomy declines whenever one supplier becomes indispensable. Expanding domestic defence manufacturing serves the same objective. Energy diversification, strategic reserves and renewable energy reduce vulnerability to external oil shocks.
Domestic capacity is ultimately the strongest form of strategic autonomy.
A country dependent on nobody for critical inputs possesses more freedom than a country merely balancing several dependencies cleverly.
This connects foreign policy directly to industrial policy. India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat or self-reliance agenda is often discussed economically, but its strategic logic is clear. Domestic production of weapons, semiconductors, energy equipment and critical technologies reduces the number of foreign veto points over Indian policy.
Complete autarky would be inefficient and unrealistic.
The objective is selective self-reliance in sectors where dependence creates political vulnerability.
This is exactly the de-risking logic Western governments now apply towards China.
India has practised versions of it much longer.
The Ukraine war demonstrates why. Sanctions can suddenly make suppliers unavailable. Wars can interrupt shipping. Governments can impose export restrictions. A defence system dependent on foreign parts becomes strategically weaker when those parts come from a state whose political objectives may diverge later.
India’s future foreign policy therefore will probably become more aligned with the West structurally even while remaining autonomous diplomatically. China’s rise pushes India towards the United States. Technology and investment deepen that trend. Russia’s growing dependence on China reduces Moscow’s usefulness as a balancing partner. Yet New Delhi will resist converting structural convergence into treaty dependence as long as it believes independent relationships produce greater leverage.
Modi’s visit to Kyiv should therefore not be read as India finally “choosing Ukraine” after choosing Russia in July.
That framing misunderstands the strategy.
India is choosing India’s ability not to choose completely.
It wants Ukrainian diplomatic credibility without surrendering Russian access.
It wants American technology without alliance dependence.
It wants discounted energy without endorsing territorial conquest.
It wants to defend sovereignty as a principle while refusing to allow Europe to define every instrument through which that principle is defended.
That position contains contradictions because foreign policy itself contains contradictions.
The question is whether India can manage them without eventually losing credibility with everyone.
For now, the Kyiv visit improves the balance. It gives Ukraine direct engagement at the highest level, gives India a stronger basis for claiming that its Russia relationship is not exclusive and reinforces New Delhi’s argument that it can communicate with actors across the conflict.
Whether this becomes meaningful mediation depends on what follows.
A bridge is strategically valuable only if somebody can cross it.
But bridges are also valuable because they keep routes open before anyone knows when they will be needed.
India has spent decades constructing precisely those routes.
Moscow remains open.
Washington remains open.
Kyiv is now more open.
That diplomatic geometry is not neutrality.
It is strategic autonomy functioning exactly as intended: preserve enough relationships that when the international system fragments, India retains more choices than the states demanding that it choose a side.
