India won't hold annual summit with Putin
According to people with knowledge of the matter, the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi won't hold an annual in-person summit with Vladimir Putin after the Russian president threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
A senior official who has knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named, said the relationship between India and Russia remains strong but trumpeting the friendship may not be beneficial for Modi.
It would mark the second time that the leaders of India and Russia haven't met face to face since 2000, when the relationship was elevated to a strategic partnership. The summit, usually held in December, was canceled once in 2020 at the height of the epidemic.
The state-owned Tass news service reported later Friday that it won't be this year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of prospects for a Putin-Modi summit.
A Russian official who asked not to be identified to discuss matters that aren't public was clear at a regional summit held in Uzbekistan in September when Modi urged Putin to seek peace in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has praised India as a key country that hasn't joined the international criticism over the invasion of Ukraine and pushed for more trade as sanctions against the US and Europe have been cut off.
A spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs didn't respond to an emailed request for comment.
India is slowly scaling back engagement as Russia's war in Ukraine is well into its 10th month, fuelling a surge in energy and food prices. Modi's government is trying to balance Moscow, a key provider of weapons and cheap energy, and the US and its allies, which have imposed sanctions and price caps on Russian oil.
India has been one of the biggest swing nations since Russia's invasion. Modi's government abstained from UN votes to condemn Putin's war and held back from participating in US-led efforts to sanction Moscow, using the opportunity to snatch cheap Russian oil.
India has been under pressure from the US and other nations to counter China's growing assertiveness along its Himalayan border. The US recently approved a package that would upgrade the F-16 fighter jet fleet of India's historic rival, Pakistan, a move New Delhi strongly opposed.
India angered Japan by joining the Russia-led Vostok- 2022 war games that held around a group of islands known as the southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan, a territorial dispute that dates back to the end of World War II. ties have been tested, even though India didn't take part in the naval exercises.
In an editorial earlier this month marking India taking over the presidency of the Group of 20 nations, Modi made a veiled reference to Russia's war.
The world is stuck in the same zero-sum mindset, according to Modi, in the Times of India newspaper. We see it when supplies of essential goods are weaponised. None of The Viral List That Turned a Yale Professor into an Enemy of the Russian State