Modi and Putin in Bishkek: On the Road Between Friendship and Strategic Autonomy

Geopolitics has always kept the relationship alive. Whether the relationship remains healthy will depend as much on economics as on diplomatic bulletins.

The tactfulness of telling a friend what he does not want to hear, in good faith and without becoming an enemy, is precisely the diplomatic luxury which India and Russia have earned over the years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit held in Bishkek and delivered a message Moscow would hardly have welcomed from any other ally. The Ukraine war must move from an “endless war” towards the “end of war”. But soon afterwards, the two leaders climbed into the same car and travelled together to the opening ceremony of the World Nomad Games.

There is considerable symbolic weight to this moment because it captured something far more complicated than friendship. India is trying to preserve strategic trust with Russia while using that very trust to have a difficult conversation about a war it does not want to see continue.

A Friendship That Can Survive Uncomfortable Conversations

This was Modi and Putin’s first in-person meeting of 2026, following their annual summit in New Delhi in December 2025. Much of the bilateral agenda was familiar, covering defence, energy, fertilisers, trade, investment, space, technology and people-to-people ties, until Ukraine inevitably cast the longest shadow over the conversation.

Modi did not condemn Russia in the language preferred by many Western capitals, but neither did he soften India's position. His argument was rooted in a formulation New Delhi has repeated for years, since the time of the USSR: conflicts ultimately have to return to dialogue and diplomacy, while every additional day of war carries costs far beyond the battlefield.

The striking part is how little the basic Indian message has changed over the years. In September 2022, when Modi met Putin in Samarkand, he told him that “today’s era is not of war”. Nearly four years later, the battlefield has changed and the geopolitical consequences have deepened, yet India’s vocabulary remains remarkably consistent, reflecting a diplomatic tradition shaped by Gandhian values and distinguishing New Delhi’s voice across the Global South. In Bishkek, Modi was essentially returning to the same conversation, this time urging Russia to move from an “endless war” towards its end.

India has not been improvising its Ukraine position from summit to summit. It has been patiently constructing a diplomatic position of its own, one that allows New Delhi to disagree with Moscow without turning disagreement into rupture.

India has repeatedly faced Western pressure, sanctions-related complications, disruptions to global energy markets and a rapidly changing balance of power around the conflict. But it has maintained communication with Russia while refusing to outsource its foreign policy choices to either Moscow or Washington.

A Short Car Ride After a Difficult Conversation:

The formal meeting delivered the policy message. The car ride revealed the subtext. Modi and Putin travelling together to the World Nomad Games may appear counterintuitive, especially against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. However, personal diplomacy often finds its value in precisely such informal spaces, where leaders can communicate with greater ease, away from the stiffness of a joint statement or the choreography of a conference table.

The moment also echoed their shared car ride at the 2025 SCO Summit in Tianjin. Such images illustrate the nuances associated with the craft of diplomacy. Formal meetings establish positions. Familiarity determines how those positions are received.

Putin himself has repeatedly acknowledged the importance of his personal relationship with Modi. That chemistry cannot resolve the Ukraine war, settle every disagreement or substitute for hard negotiations. What it can do is preserve a channel in which difficult arguments remain possible. A relationship is valuable not because both sides always agree, but because disagreement does not immediately destroy the relationship.

Ukraine Is No Longer Someone Else’s War

For India, the Ukraine conflict has also become progressively harder to view as a distant European crisis. Ukraine is no longer merely somebody else’s war when Indian sailors are caught in its spillover and Indian citizens are drawn into its machinery.

The attacks and instability around the Black Sea have implications for maritime trade, shipping routes and the safety of Indian nationals. India may not be a party to the conflict, but it has citizens and commercial interests exposed to its consequences.

The issue of Indians recruited into the Russian military makes that human cost even more immediate. According to the Indian government, 227 Indian nationals have been recruited into Russian military service since the war began. Of these, 139 have been discharged, while 51 have died. These figures change the character of the conversation.

India can maintain an important relationship with Russia while insisting that Indian citizens should not become casualties of a war they did not choose to fight. New Delhi has pressed Moscow for the release and repatriation of those who remain. Diplomatic warmth has value, but it cannot become an excuse for avoiding difficult questions.

The Economic Aspect of India-Russia Complementarity

Geopolitics has always kept the relationship alive. Whether the relationship remains healthy will depend as much on economics as on diplomatic bulletins.

India-Russia trade has expanded sharply, with bilateral trade turnover rising 2.6% in the first half of 2026 despite a slight decline during the previous year. But the composition of that trade remains a problem, particularly because India's purchases of Russian energy have grown much faster than Indian exports to Russia.

Just a week before the Bishkek meeting, the 27th India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation met in Moscow. The discussions focused partly on broadening Indian exports and improving market access for Indian products.

These are important because the next phase of the relationship cannot rest indefinitely on a heavily asymmetric trade structure. Indian businesses need greater access to the Russian market, while Russia needs a relationship with India that extends beyond energy and defence procurement.

The old strategic architecture was built during an era when military cooperation carried much of the relationship. The future will require a wider economic foundation. In that sense, trade is not a secondary issue, but a test of whether the partnership can evolve.

From Governments to People

The India-Russia relationship is gradually acquiring a human layer. Putin pointed to the rising number of Indian students in Russia, which has grown sevenfold over the past decade and now approaches 40,000.

The figure matters for a reason that has little to do with statistics. It is widely recognised that a relationship sustained only by governments can change quickly when governments change. A relationship embedded among students, families, businesses, researchers and travellers develops a different kind of resilience.

For decades, India-Russia ties were associated mainly with defence cooperation, diplomatic familiarity and state-to-state engagement. Their future will overwhelmingly depend on whether ordinary Indians and Russians encounter each other often enough for the relationship to acquire a life beyond foreign ministries.

The Test of Strategic Autonomy

The Modi–Putin equation stands out for many reasons, but asking whether India is “closer” to Russia or the West ultimately misses the point. India’s relationship with Russia is built on interests that are too concrete to be reduced to geopolitical camps. Defence supplies remain important, energy is vital, fertilisers matter to food security, while space cooperation and technology continue to carry strategic value.

Russia, meanwhile, needs India not merely as a major economic partner, but as one of the most consequential powers outside the Western alliance system. Such mutual dependence gives the relationship resilience, but it also creates its own risks. The closer two countries become strategically, the more carefully each must guard against becoming overly dependent on the other.

The Indian approach is neither blind loyalty nor strategic abandonment. It is an attempt to preserve enough trust to disagree, enough access to influence, and enough independence to walk away from positions that do not serve Indian interests.

BRICS gives that strategy another arena. India is chairing the grouping in 2026, with Putin expected in New Delhi for the BRICS Summit on September 12–13. Hence, the Bishkek meeting was not an isolated encounter. It was also preparation for another conversation in which Russia will remain important, but within a much larger Indian agenda involving global trade, development and the shifting architecture of international power.

For Moscow, India's continued engagement offers a connection to a major non-Western power that has retained its foreign-policy autonomy. For New Delhi, maintaining communication with Moscow provides leverage precisely because India can speak to Russia when many Western governments cannot.

The Diplomacy Beyond the Handshake

PM Modi and President Putin

The most revealing image from Bishkek was neither the handshake nor the formal meeting table. It was the car, carrying two leaders with different calculations about a war that has become rather costly for the international system and, more directly, for India’s own interests.

Personal trust cannot end the Ukraine war. It cannot correct the trade imbalance on its own. But without that trust, India would have far less room to raise precisely these difficult issues with Moscow.

The real question now is whether that trust can translate into something more tangible. The shared car ride lasted only a short while. The diplomatic journey ahead will be much longer, and India, despite the pressures surrounding it, appears determined to keep its hands on the steering wheel.