Putin hat einen großen strategischen Fehler begangen. Diese Beziehung zeigt uns warum

It may look like an anti-Western alliance, but Putin and Modi’s [comradeship](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/modi-back-pedals-kyiv-visit-ill-judged-hug-putin-3240193?ico=in-line_link) is driven by energy, not ideology. As Russia weakens and drifts closer to China, Indian interest in Russia will fade.

“Our relationship is so strong that you will understand me without any translation,” Vladimir Putin said of Narendra Modi a little over a year ago, to appreciative guffaws in a gilded hall in Kazan, following the customary handshake-and-hug routine. It is a pleasingly avuncular turn of phrase, the sort that flatters both men and looks excellent framed beneath a state portrait or on a Kremlin press release. Here they were, two elected autocrats, apparently both mind-readers, dispensing with interpreters and, one suspects, awkward questions.

But like most diplomatic *bons mots*, it was designed to draw the eye away from the balance sheet. Strip out the stagecraft and the Putin-Modi special relationship starts to look less like a meeting of souls and more like a loyalty card scheme. Russia needs oil buyers, liquidity and a way round sanctions. India needs cheap energy, spare parts for Soviet-era kit and the freedom to keep its options open. The embrace is for the cameras; the real conversation happens in spreadsheets.

This is why Modi can hug Putin in Moscow one month and clasp hands with Zelensky in Kyiv the next, all while dispatching his national security adviser, Ajit Doval, to the Kremlin with a much-trailed “peace plan” that politely disappears into a desk drawer. India casts itself as mediator, confidant and bridge but don’t hold your breath for a breakthrough. Delhi isn’t playing peacemaker so much as shopkeeper, quietly totalling up prices and supply lines.

It has been a happy marriage of convenience so far. Russia is working on what is billed as India’s largest nuclear power plant. Trade targets are trumpeted at [$100bn by 2030](https://www.business-standard.com/economy/news/india-russia-aim-for-100-billion-bilateral-trade-target-by-2030-124070901077_1.html), up from a record $69bn in the year to March 2025. Most tellingly, India has emerged as Moscow’s largest buyer of crude, a fact that makes Delhi uncomfortably complicit in financing the war in Ukraine even as it insists on neutrality.