The historic, first-ever visit of an Indian head of state to Ukraine is taking place as Ukraine celebrates its Independence. The timing is not accidental. It’s part of a tightrope balancing act, which India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been walking between Russia and Ukraine, and between China and the US.
Modi’s recent sojourn to Moscow left India’s Western allies unimpressed, and Ukrainians deeply hurt. Just as a Russian missile hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Modi was shown embracing Vladimir Putin, who called him his “dearest friend.” The timing of the attack coincided with a message: For all its rhetoric of pacifist non-alignment, India remains Russia’s steadfast ally, unwilling to condemn its most heinous war crimes. Russia’s refusal to repatriate 69 Indian citizens who have been duped into fighting its war — even after Modi’s visit — is another attempt to throw India strategically off-kilter.
The cordial visit to China’s closest ally and the world’s biggest aggressor-state troubled Washington, which made deepening trade and defence cooperation with India a cornerstone of foreign policy.
Modi’s visit to Ukraine, following a day in Poland, Kyiv’s key ally, is an opportunity to swing back to balance, to restore India’s reputation as a peaceable yet principled global player, and to reassure Euro-American allies, who are by far its most important economic and strategic partners.
Don’t be fooled by rumours that Modi is carrying Putin’s peace message to Kyiv. That is but another one of Kremlin’s information stunts, meant to paint Putin as a peace-seeker. Modi will no doubt call President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to peace dialogue, but he has repeatedly refused to act as mediator in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
In Kyiv, Modi will be pursuing other aims. For India, the visit presents an opportunity to review and re-launch its relations with Europe’s largest, resource-rich state. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine exported vast quantities of agricultural, machine-building and military goods to India. Russia’s shelling has damaged these industries, but the war also created new opportunities for Indo-Ukrainian co-operation: Economic, military and political.
To move forward with these, India and Ukraine will have to let go of past hurts. Yes, 26 years ago, a newly independent Ukraine, having just given up its own nuclear arsenal, the world’s third largest, criticised India’s nuclear tests. Contrary to common rumour, however, Ukraine never voted against them in the UN Security Council, of which it was not a member. It also opposed nuclear tests in Pakistan. Ukraine has been critical of India’s Kashmir policy, but so have most of India’s key Euro-American partners. While many in India believe that Russia stood by India during the 1971 war with Pakistan, few realise that it was actually the Soviet Union under the Ukrainian-born Leonid Brezhnev who supported the country. Fewer still know that the slogan Hindi-Rusi bhai-bhai was coined by USSR’s Ukrainian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who did the most to advance Indo-Soviet relations.
In the late 1990s, Ukraine did sell 320 T-80UD tanks to Pakistan in a deal that saved the Kharkiv Tank Factory from going bankrupt. But Ukraine has always exported more military equipment to India than Pakistan. And between 2018 and 2022, Ukraine’s arms deliveries to India doubled, while sales to Pakistan dropped by a third.
The real skeleton in history’s closet here is Russia’s. Since the embargo on arms sales to Pakistan was lifted 10 years ago, Russia rushed to military cooperation with Islamabad, helping it to acquire large Mi-26 transport helicopters, precision-guided munitions, artillery, air defence, and long-range missiles. Military exports to Pakistan are in fact part of Russia’s regional strategy: A sale of aircraft to India is always “balanced” by a sale of anti-aircraft systems to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Zorya gas turbines do not only propel Indian battleships and submarines, they also enabled the Chandrayaan moon landing. On the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion, India signed a 100-million-dollar deal with Ukraine’s Zorya-Mashproekt to develop gas turbine power plants. The Zorya-Mashproekt is in a city which has been under Russian shelling. While Russia keeps waging war, Ukraine will need new production sites, which India can offer, while also creating thousands of jobs. With Bharat Forge acquiring half of the company’s stakes last year, gas turbine production will be at the top of Modi’s agenda.
Russia’s war has ironically generated ideal circumstances for Indo-Ukrainian military trade. Experts agree that this is the last war for older Soviet tanks and other military equipment. Ukraine’s urgent need for weapons required to defend itself creates an opportunity for India to shed the virtually obsolete Soviet arms. As India pivots away from Soviet and Russian weapons to NATO systems, it can swap Soviet hardware and ammunition for Western counterparts, in the way that Poland updated its arsenal in the past two years. No doubt Modi discussed this experience in Poland.
Ukraine’s maritime victory against Russia’s vastly superior Black Sea Fleet, which was achieved with innovative waterborne drone technology, has placed Ukraine at the vanguard of modern, low-cost defence developments. Military cooperation with Ukraine could be a strategic game-changer for India, especially in the Indian Ocean, where it faces a neighbour with a military budget nearly four times the size of its own.
Weapons will not be the only matters in focus. While Ukraine’s future reconstruction will offer huge opportunities for India’s strained labour market, both countries are leaders in digital statehood, a key site of potential cooperation. Indian electronic voting machines could prove invaluable to wartime Ukraine, while Ukraine’s ground-breaking DIIA app, which places government documents and services securely in one’s smart phone, could revolutionise Indian governance.
The conversations in Kyiv will no doubt be tense, as Modi considers India’s relations with Russia and China, its other major trade partner, and Zelenskyy struggles with grievances over Modi’s neutral position. Ukraine’s Independence Day, which follows on India’s own, offers a vivid symbolic occasion to launch a partnership between states that have now emerged from colonial shadows to become major new players in the wider world.
The writer teaches anthropology at King’s College London
