Newly appointed Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov, whose embassy’s biography describes him as “currently the senior-most serving India affairs expert in the Russian Foreign Service”, shared his vision for bilateral relations in an exclusive interview with Izvestia. It’s in Russian but Google Translate does a decent job conveying his main points for those who can’t read the language. The present analysis will draw attention to the highlights from his interview before analyzing everything that he revealed.

Ambassador Alipov acknowledged that it’ll be difficult to reach their mutual goal of $30 billion in trade by 2025 but blamed this on the unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. They plan to reach this ambitious milestone through further Russian investments in India’s railways, shipbuilding, mechanical engineering, aircraft industry, and nuclear power plants. Pharmaceutical cooperation is also a very promising avenue for them nowadays too.

On a broader level, Ambassador Alipov envisions more Russian regions beyond just those in his country’s Far East more actively engaging with India through interregional forums. He insists that the mutual intent for this to happen is there but that COVID-19 once again slowed down their plans. In his optimistic assessment, “The only thing left to do is to establish direct contacts and start practical work. We will actively work in this direction and assist such activities.”

Moving along, Ambassador Alipov also addressed the intense competition between Russia and Western countries for military-technical cooperation with India. Nevertheless, he’s confident that Russia will maintain its leading role in India’s national security strategy. That’s because it’s one of the few countries that doesn’t mind producing high-quality and state-of-the-art wares in India in accordance with its government’s “Make In India” policy of prioritizing domestic production on all fronts.

Speaking of military ties, Ambassador Alipov also encouraged India to cooperate more closely with the Russian-led CSTO. It involves three Central Asian countries, and the entire region is already on very friendly terms with that South Asian state as evidenced by last week’s first India-Central Asia Summit. They all have shared security threats stemming from Afghanistan so he believes that it’s only natural for them to comprehensively deepen their multilateral military cooperation with one another.

Nevertheless, Ambassador Alipov maintained that Russia will never tell India who to be friends with and who not. His country fully supports India’s envisioned emergence as an independent pole of influence in the world and especially across the Asia-Pacific. While Moscow’s concerned about the Quad, it has no doubt that New Delhi will ultimately figure out what best suits its national interests. It’s important to mention that he also reaffirmed that Russia never imposes its views onto India or anyone else.

This is especially true when it comes to India’s growing full-spectrum ties with the US. Russia isn’t worried about India’s support of the “rules-based international order” since New Delhi reassured Moscow that it conceptualizes this as simply signaling support for international law as enshrined in the UN Charter. This contrasts with the US-led West’s conceptualization of this term that Russia has serious problems with because of its unilateralism, revisionism, and hypocrisy.

Trilateral relations with China through the RIC format remain a priority for Russia, but summer 2020’s clashes between its two Asian members resulted in tensions arising between them. Moscow will mediate only if requested to do so and will never impose itself on either of its top strategic partners. Ambassador Alipov has no doubt that “there is simply no other way than interaction, development and strengthening of ties between these largest Asian countries.”

The best-case scenario would be the launching of a trilateral dialogue between their Defense Ministers though he also acknowledges that this might not happen right away, especially after summer 2020’s dramatic events. Nevertheless, Ambassador Alipov still believes that this will eventually take place although he said that there currently isn’t any talk about it. That dialogue would be mutually beneficial if it does indeed happen no matter how long it takes.

Finally, Ambassador Alipov praised the beginning of free trade talks between the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and India but cautioned that this will also take some time to bear fruit too. That’s because a lot of difficult and very specific work needs to be done on it as with any free trade agreement, let alone with an economy the size of India’s. Even so, he’s optimistic that everything will eventually work out and both sides will benefit upon the conclusion of such an agreement.

From his interview, it can be concluded that Russia regards India as among its top partners anywhere in the world and will always treat it with the utmost respect. Relations are comprehensively diversifying from their hitherto disproportionate dependence on military-technical cooperation to other sectors such as connectivity, energy, and pharmaceuticals. Moreover, it’s obvious that prior misunderstandings between Russia and India over their respective grand strategies have been completely cleared up.

Both Great Powers realized that they’re actually complementary and that they have more to gain by aligning their grand strategies all across the Eastern Hemisphere. This explains Ambassador Alipov’s full support for India’s envisioned emergence as an independent pole of influence in the world and especially the Asia-Pacific. While he hopes that Chinese-Indian ties will improve, especially in military terms, their continued challenges won’t have any adverse effect on Russian-Indian ties.

The future is extremely bright for Russian-Indian relations. Ambassador Alipov’s suggestion that India cooperate more closely with the CSTO and Central Asia shows that Moscow is enthusiastically opening the door for New Delhi to expand its influence in the Eurasian Heartland. This is a welcome move that will hopefully be reciprocated by India in the Asia-Pacific. The eventual conclusion of a free trade deal between these two will also do wonders for their special and privileged strategic partnership.