European Commission president subtly warns India about Russia-China growing ties

She said that the world's response to Russia's aggression will decide the future of both the international system and the global economy

Russia's aggression against Ukraine would affect not only Europe, but the Indo-Pacific region too, the European Commission's president Ursula Von der Leyen said in New Delhi on Monday, tacitly warning India about growing ties between the former Soviet Union nation and China.

“The outcome of the (Russia-Ukraine) war will not only determine the future of Europe, but also deeply affect the Indo-Pacific region,” Von der Leyen said at the “Raisina Dialogue” – the annual conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics organised by the Ministry of External Affairs in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

“What happens in Ukraine will have an impact on the Indo-Pacific region. It already has. Countries battered by two years of the Covid-19 pandemic must deal now with rising prices for grains, energy and fertilisers as a direct result of (Vladimir) Putin's war of choice”, she said.

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With Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who inaugurated the conference, himself present in the audience, the president of the European Commission apparently sought to tacitly nudge India to stop avoiding directly condemning Russia for its aggression against Ukraine.

Modi and Von der Leyen had a meeting earlier on the day and they discussed “several geopolitical issues of topical importance”, including “the situation in Ukraine and developments in the Indo-Pacific region”, according to a press-release issued by the Ministry of External Affairs after the meeting.

“And if we consider what it means, for Europe and Asia, that Russia and China have forged a seemingly unrestrained pact. They have declared that the friendship between them has no limits, that there are no forbidden areas of cooperation. This was in February this year. And then, the invasion of Ukraine followed,” she said, wondering: “What can we expect from the new international relations that both have called for?”

India refrained from directly denouncing Russia for its aggression against Ukraine, in view of its decades-old strategic relations with and its dependence on the former Soviet Union nation for military hardware. The United States and other western nations over the past few weeks repeatedly alerted India about growing ties between Russia and China. The western nations also warned New Delhi that if Russia could get away with its aggression against Ukraine, it would encourage China to step up its belligerence against India and other nations in the Indo-Pacific region.

“This is a defining moment. Our decisions these days will shape the decades to come. Our response to Russia's aggression today will decide the future of both the international system and the global economy,” Von der Leyen said. She added that Europe would make sure that Russia's "unprovoked and unjustified" aggression against Ukraine would be a "strategic failure" for President Vladimir Putin's nation.

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