Felix K. Chang
India has long prided itself on its strategically independent or non-aligned foreign policy. But the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian War has put India’s approach to strategic independence under an international spotlight. Although Indian leaders have often stated that their country’s strategic independence does not bar New Delhi from leaning to one side or another, India’s tilt toward Russia during the war has been more pronounced than many in the West, particularly Europe and the United States, expected.
Western leaders hoped that India would have aligned itself with Ukraine and against Russia, especially given New Delhi’s growing involvement in the Quad grouping of major Indo-Pacific democratic countries in recent years. But India did not. Instead, it pursued an approach that seemed to favor Russia. Early in the war, India thrice abstained from United Nations resolutions that condemned Russian actions in Ukraine. It also sought to keep its trade with Russia flowing, even as the West strove to restrict Russian access to global markets. In mid-March, India allowed its refiners to buy Russian oil, despite Western efforts to curtail international purchases of it. And, at the same time, New Delhi and Moscow began to discuss how to avoid U.S. dollars as the transaction medium (i.e., “de-dollarization”) in their trade, which would enable Russia to more easily skirt the West’s economic sanctions against it.
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