/ world today news/ Indian Foreign Minister Subramanyam Jaishankar is on a five-day visit to Russia. The foreign minister from Delhi has a rich agenda. He has already held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov.
Jaishankar was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to whom the Indian guest handed over a letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, noting that the Indian leader will visit our country in 2024.
It is recalled that the two sides agreed to hold annual high-level meetings consecutively in both countries. However, due to the covid pandemic, the last such meeting was held in 2021 in the Indian capital, and now it is Russia’s turn to host it, which Putin confirmed by extending an official invitation to Modi to visit Russia.
The two sides promised to agree on the dates in a way that would be convenient for both Moscow and New Delhi. The question is not an empty one: in both countries there are upcoming elections – presidential in our country and parliamentary in India, which are no less important, since India is a parliamentary republic in which the government is formed based on the results of these elections.
Hence a small touch: the parties are discussing the future program of contacts without particularly considering these and other choices; Putin specifically wished Modi success, as he told Jaishankar during the meeting.
This means mutual satisfaction with the dynamics of the relationship, in which – it is clear – it is not desirable to change specific figures. At the same time, it demonstrates confidence in the permanence of relations in which – as is implied – it is not desirable to change specific figures.
Together, it demonstrates confidence in the sustainability of the positions of the Russian and Indian authorities and the policy that preserves high levels of public trust. In today’s complicated situation in the world, this is very important.
The official agenda of the Indian foreign minister’s visit is related to the 25th meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation, which Jaishankar and Manturov are attending as co-chairs.
The Indian guest will also visit the northern capital, and during his stay in Moscow he visited the Red Square. The emphasis in the economic part of the talks remains on the rapid growth of mutual trade turnover and related problems.
Experts from both countries point out in particular that the trade imbalance has grown sharply due to intensive purchases of Russian oil by India.
In the structure of trade turnover of 54.7 billion dollars, Russian exports account for 51.4 billion dollars, and Russian imports – only 3.3 billion dollars. At the same time, according to economists, Russia is not interested in trading for dollars, and India does not want to pay in yuan, so as not to strengthen the position of China, which is considered the main competitor of Delhi in Asia.
Payments are reported to be made in Emirates (dirhams) and Hong Kong (HK dollars) currencies. However, when the purchase price of oil exceeds the “sub-sanctioned” 60 dollars per barrel, the payment mechanism and currencies are not disclosed by the parties.
Thus, a compromise is found between Moscow’s refusal to submit to Western sanctions and New Delhi’s reluctance to fall under such secondary sanctions.
Indian rupees are used to pay for the weapons that India continues to actively buy from Russia, although military imports from our country have almost halved, and purchases of American and other Western weapons at its expense have increased.
And according to experts, it is this side of export-import operations that is connected with the formation of assets belonging to our country in Indian banks, whose fate and ways of use are one of the important topics of the negotiations. However, this situation does not create any tension.
It’s clear why. Russian-Indian relations, although the economic component is important for our country due to the circumvention of the Western regime of sanctions, are interesting above all from a geopolitical point of view.
India is a country with a multi-vector foreign policy. As S. Jaishankar said on the eve of his visit to Russia, speaking at an Indian university, the advantage of Indian foreign policy is the country’s equidistant from world centers. More precisely, from the confrontation of the Russian-Chinese tandem with the collective West, led by the United States.
The reasons for this multi-vectority? First of all, India is a bilingual country, closely connected by thousands of threads to the former British colonial metropolis.
This is from a civilizational point of view, though at the same time India is undoubtedly one of the very few civilized countries on earth. Maybe Russia, China and to some extent Japan.
But by no means the West, where the USA is the geopolitical center and at the same time the cultural and historical periphery of Europe.
Second, from a geopolitical point of view, India is a maritime country. It differs significantly from the land forces – Russia and China. In the latter, since Xi Jinping came to power, the continental northern vector dominates the maritime southern vector, which acquires the character of “marginal”, peripheral.
Third, in withdrawing from India, the Anglo-Saxon colonizers divided the country in such a way as to create as many intractable contradictions as possible, many of which, especially the Indian-Pakistani controversy over Kashmir, are still felt today.
At the same time, contradictions have also been built into India-China relations, taking advantage of the weaknesses of both New Delhi and Beijing at the time these borders were being drawn.
To put it bluntly, the presence of this whole set of contradictions has encouraged India to maneuver without rejecting Western claims of engagement.
New Delhi is also quite jealous of the rapprochement between Russia and China, seeking a counterbalance to it in the membership of the US-led QUAD bloc, and it is this fact that has allowed Washington to promote the geopolitical concept of the Indo-Pacific, which neither Moscow nor Beijing admit. The US has no other leading positions in the Indian Ocean.
On the other hand, India is a member not only of BRICS but also of the SCO, whose 2002 constitution states in black and white that the organization is responsible for regional security issues.
By concealing its joint membership with Washington in the QUAD, India is at the same time protecting itself from American intervention in its disputes with its neighbors, which could deepen them, with the help of the SCO.
Everything is very simple: Kashmir issues or territorial disputes with China in Ladakh, South Tibet (Arunachal Pradesh) and Doklam are managed and resolved in a format that does not include Washington, which wants to warm its hands on it.
The SCO is the ideal platform for this, within which, as well as on its sidelines during summits, the Indian leader gets the opportunity to resolve behind-the-scenes disputes with both Chinese and Pakistani leaders.
This has already paid off in current events in Myanmar, where, contrary to American expectations, China’s political intervention in conflict resolution issues has not led to a clash of interests between New Delhi and Beijing.
Because the Indian capital is well aware that the threats posed by the internal conflict in Myanmar are undermining the stability of India’s border territories, which include many troubled territories, no less than China’s Yunnan province.
It seems that it is this range of issues that the Russian and Indian negotiators had in mind when, during the current visit of the Indian foreign minister, they emphasized the importance of the upcoming discussion of the joint role of Moscow and New Delhi in multilateral international organizations.
There is another aspect: Russia’s and China’s support for Security Council reform ideas being promoted at the United Nations. Objectively speaking, neither Moscow nor Beijing is interested in such a reform, as it dilutes the level of our influence, given the right of veto.
However, it is in our interest to support the ambitions of India, as well as Brazil and other old and new BRICS members who claim to participate in the expansion of the Security Council.
But at the same time, Russia sets one condition: that this expansion should take place at the expense of the continental representations of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and not by including Germany and Japan in the Security Council, against which the UN was originally created in the 1940s years of the last century.
It also creates a situation where India’s interests are fundamentally at odds with the West’s collective interests in this matter, which is objectively in our favor.
The issue of Ukraine occupies a separate line in the Russian-Indian dialogue on geopolitical topics, and Putin, receiving Jaishankar, emphasized that Russia highly values India’s peacekeeping position and is ready – in the private part of the meeting – to inform New Delhi about the course of the conflict and the situation there.
To what extent is Russia really interested in peacekeeping forces of any kind, given that the question of peace in Ukraine will be resolved either through direct negotiations with the US and the West, or through the military defeat of the Kiev regime?
Paradoxically, Russia is interested in mediation efforts, since the very fact that they involve countries from the Global South (formerly known as the “Third World”) diverts them from the imperatives of the Western position and the so-called “Zelensky Plan”. which was inspired by Kiev couriers from Washington and London.
It is the activation of mediation, the readiness for a leading role, which China, Africa, India and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf have successively announced, that forms the critical mass of sentiments that in the West are viewed through the prism of the current failure of plans to isolate our country in the international arena.
This failure is now commonplace in all analytical and expert reasoning of representatives of Western political circles and think tanks.
From our brief analysis, it is clear that the current visit of the Indian Foreign Minister to Moscow and St. Petersburg is of the greatest significance and potential; we will not learn all the details of what was agreed from the media, but such are the laws of big politics.
India, despite its multi-vector nature, remains in the “bowl” of Greater Eurasia, and this is the main and very positive result of Russian policy in the Indian direction.
P.S.
Only after the article reached the editorial office, the following important information regarding Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was disseminated in the media.
Ten days ago, another meeting of the G-7 and the leading developing countries took place, in which not all the majority countries of the world participated, as some of them rejected the invitation…
The meeting was held in complete secrecy, nothing was reported about it anywhere, no leak was made….
The close allies and associates of Moscow who participated in this meeting did not promise anyone to keep secret from the Russian side the issues that directly relate to Russia.
Another similar meeting is scheduled for January, and in February a whole summit for peace will be held, at which this Zelensky formula will be approved.
The dissemination of this information with reference to the Russian Foreign Ministry during the stay of Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar in Russia almost unequivocally indicates that Russia received the relevant data about this meeting and Washington’s subsequent political plans in the Ukrainian direction, including from the Indian side.
In short, it can be said that the West has apparently decided to narrow the format of the previous meetings, which took place in June in Copenhagen, in August in Jeddah and in late October in Malta, excluding the countries of the Global South that Washington considers disloyal to himself.
It can be assumed that Moscow has penetrated this design, and a number of countries participating in the recent meeting that Lavrov spoke of initially agreed their participation with the Russian side. In any case, the Indian side is grateful for this information.
Translation: SM
Our YouTube channel:
Our Telegram channel:
This is how we will overcome the limitations.
Share on your profiles, with friends, in groups and on pages.
#RussianIndian #ties #bone #throat #USA #West
