Ahead of Modi's visit to US, Russia signals its interest in deepening ties with India's arch-rival Pakistan

Moscow has sent out a subtle message to New Delhi ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States with President Vladimir Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov promising to deepen and expand Russia’s relations with India’s troublesome neighbour Pakistan, including in the domains of security, politics and economy.

Lavrov even said that Russia considered Pakistan as “a key international partner in the joint efforts to combat common security challenges and threats, including transborder crime and terrorism”.

The comment is unlikely to go down well with New Delhi, which has been accusing Pakistan of exporting terror to India. New Delhi has also been dismissing Islamabad’s bid to play the victim and counter international criticism over the presence of terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan.

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Lavrov made the comments on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Russia and Pakistan. He went on to say that Russia’s vision of the world order and its understanding of traditional moral values was in harmony with the principles of faith, unity and discipline formulated by the “Father of Pakistan” Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Jinnah is blamed for the Partition of India and for the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

Ever since Russia launched its “special military operations” in Ukraine on February 24 last year, India has been drawing flak for not joining the United States and other western nations in condemning the former Soviet Union nation for its aggression against the East European country.

New Delhi has refrained from criticising Moscow, apparently in view of India’s deep Cold War era ties with Russia. While New Delhi has been maintaining the strategic balance in its ties with Moscow and Washington D.C. over the past couple of decades, Modi’s meeting with President Joe Biden in the White House next week is expected to add new momentum to the India-US ties, particularly in the fields of defence as well as critical and emerging technologies.

Moscow, however, used the event held on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Russia-Pakistan relations to send out a subtle message to New Delhi.

“We are willing to work together on further engagement of our countries and peoples, strengthening mutually beneficial relations in politics, security, economy, education, in cultural and humanitarian fields as well as in other areas,” said the Russian Foreign Minister, while virtually addressing the people of Pakistan.

Russia has since long been the largest supplier of military hardware to India and has been maintaining a low-key relationship with Pakistan. But with the changes in the geopolitical landscape and New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington D.C. since the landmark India-US civil nuclear agreement of 2008, Moscow too had started responding to Islamabad’s overtures to improve bilateral relations.

The two sides had also started discussing the sale of Russian Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan in 2014 and the delivery of the choppers had purportedly begun in 2018, although New Delhi had conveyed to Moscow its concerns over the deal.

Moscow had also inked a defence cooperation agreement with Islamabad in November 2015 and the two nations had held the first joint military drill in September-October, 2016 – just weeks after India signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement with the US.

The last annual exercise between the Russian Army and the Pakistan Army had taken place in November 2020. Russia in April 2021 had pledged to provide more ‘special’ military equipment to Pakistan and hold more bilateral wargames both in the mountains as well as in the Arabian Sea.

New Delhi had in the past alerted the international community that the funds provided to Pakistan to support its counterterrorism operations had in fact been used to finance the export of terror to India.

Besides, the military hardware provided to Pakistan had also been used against India.