Putin-Modi summit shows limits of Donald Trump’s global clout

An unusually cordial summit meeting between Indian President and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sent an unmistakable message to US President Donald Trump: Your global influence has limits.

After two days of talks in New Delhi and a slew of agreements, one can draw the conclusion that the tight relations between Russia and India, built up over decades, remain unaffected despite US and European efforts to isolate Russia and despite widespread condemnation of its war on Ukraine.

Uncharacteristically for the verbose American president, Trump refrained from immediate comment on two days of a summit during which Modi and Putin portrayed the long-standing Indian-Russian relationship as an example of stability at a time of geopolitical turbulence.

Those ties have been a source of deep annoyance for Trump, who fumed in a social media post in September that it “looks like we have lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China” and sharply criticised Indian purchases of Russian oil, which he said lubricated Putin’s war machine.

That criticism came after a meeting between Modi, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. American annoyance with India has not changed since.

US, disenchantment with India went beyond the rhetorical: the US hit India with an additional trade tariff of 25 per cent as punishment for the oil purchases, bringing the tariff total to 50 per cent.

Modi has shown no sign of giving in to American pressure, and Putin subtly nudged his host to stick to his policy by saying that “Russia is ready for uninterrupted shipments of fuel to India.”

These shipments increased dramatically after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because Russia offered heavy discounts to bypass Western sanctions. India is now the second biggest buyer of Russian crude after China.

The summit, largely ignored by the U.S. media, has highlighted Modi’s skill in walking a tricky tightrope between his country’s historic relationship with Russia and growing economic ties with the United States and its vast market for a large array of goods.

Indian-Russian ties date back to the Cold War and Delhi’s leadership role in the non-aligned movement of countries that tried to avoid taking sides between the Soviet Union and the United States. As far as defence ties are concerned, India leaned towards the Soviet Union. Russia, its successor, remains India’s main supplier of military hardware.

The summit underlined that the cornerstone of Indian foreign policy remains “strategic autonomy”, which withstands external pressures even from an American president who has left no doubt he considers himself the lead player on the increasingly complicated geopolitical order.

This view was mocked in public last summer by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last summer after Trump imposed a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian exports. In an interview with CNN, the Brazilian leaders said: “What we cannot have is President Trump forgetting that he was elected to govern the U.S. He was elected not to be the emperor of the world.”

In the absence of immediate official comment, one Washington analyst predicted that the display of warmth and friendship at the Delhi summit would cause “heartburn” in the diplomatic and national security communities of the Trump administration.

Not least because Modi described relations between the two countries as “steadfast like a pole star.”

India and Russia have held annual summits since the year 2000, when they declared a strategic partnership. The meetings alternated between Russia and India, paused after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and resumed in 2024 when Modi visited Moscow. No date for the next summit has been set.