New Delhi, India – When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets any male world leader, a bear hug is almost inevitable. Yet his embrace last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow has stirred firm public pushback from both Washington and Kyiv.

In a series of statements over several days, US officials criticised Modi’s visit to Russia, the first since Putin launched a full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022.

The US National Security adviser cautioned that strong ties with Russia were a “bad bet” for India. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US was concerned about India’s relations with Russia. And Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India, warned New Delhi that it could not take its friendship with Washington “for granted”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was more direct. He referred to the deadly missile attack on Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital the day before Modi’s Moscow visit. “It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day,” he wrote on X.

Analysts say the answer lies in a combination of history, New Delhi’s confidence in its ability to juggle multiple complex relations and a bet that former US President Donald Trump might well return to power and soften Washington’s tough stance against Russia.

‘My friend Donald Trump’

On Saturday, after a sniper positioned on a roof outside a Trump rally in Pennsylvania struck the former president with a bullet, killing another person and wounding two others, a volley of reactions tumbled in from around the world.

Among them was a post by Modi, who condemned the attack, describing Trump as “my friend”. The two leaders had held joint public events in Houston and the Indian city of Ahmedabad, and a senior Indian government official indicated that the Modi administration believed Trump might return to power in November.

One way a Trump win would help India, analysts say, is by easing the pressure on New Delhi to turn away from Moscow.

“A second Trump administration, almost certainly, will care less about the optics of Russia-India ties,” said Christopher Clary, an assistant professor in political science at the University of Albany and a non-resident fellow with the Washington-based Stimson Center’s South Asia programme.

A fine balance

To be sure, India-Russia relations have a long history of their own. A legatee of the Soviet Union with which India enjoyed close relations during the Cold War, Russia has maintained ties with New Delhi.

Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, India has also dramatically ramped up its purchase of Russian crude. Russia is today India’s biggest supplier of oil and those imports have led to the total volume of India-Russia trade – which used to hover about about $10bn a year not long ago – skyrocketing to $63bn.

In the West, India has faced criticism for these oil purchases, which – the allegation goes – help finance Russia’s war. India has rejected the criticism and has argued that by buying Russian oil the West no longer wants, it is in fact helping keep global crude prices stable.

At the same time, India has in recent years doubled down on strengthening ties with the West, especially the US, whose help it sees as essential to warding off the perceived threat emanating from China’s rise.

India has insisted that it is merely exercising its strategic autonomy. But speaking last week in the eastern Indian city or Kolkata, Garcetti, the US ambassador, pushed back, saying that “there is no such thing as a strategic autonomy during a conflict”, referring to the war in Ukraine.

Has India crossed a ‘red line’?

The Russia trip also coincided with other sources of friction between India and the US. US prosecutors allege that an Indian government agent tried to orchestrate the assassination of Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US national who holds dual citizenship with Canada. In June, the Czech Republic extradited, to the US, the Indian man who US prosecutors claim was trying to hire hitmen for the job.

Still, analysts say that India and Modi have enough cards in their hands to be able to weather niggles in their relationship.

Days before flying to Moscow, Modi skipped the annual leaders’ summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, led by China and Russia.

New Delhi is also expected to host a summit of the Quad later this year, according to the Indian government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Later this year, the Russian city of Kazan will also host a summit of the BRICS grouping. The BRICS, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa until last year, has now expanded to include several other countries.

Whether Modi returns to Russia for a second time in three months or not could signal how far India is willing to test ties with the US, the government official suggested.

For now, India and the US understand that they need each other too much to risk upsetting their partnership.

“New Delhi and Washington will understand each other’s compulsions,” she said. “And the larger US-India relationship is far too important to be derailed by one speed bump.”

Or one hug.