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Few ideas cause greater anxiety in the Indian strategic community than a “G2”. It invokes fears of a US-China partnership that might produce geopolitical duopoly over Asia. But Delhi should also reflect on another G2 — a strategic accommodation between America and Russia. India has fewer reasons to fear it, although it would bring complications of its own.
US President Donald Trump’s decision last week to ease sanctions on Russian diesel puts that possibility, distant though it might be, back in focus. After a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump announced Russian supplies for American and global markets. Washington authorised diesel imports until April 2027. With diesel above $6 per gallon and the question of inflation hovering over congressional elections on November 3, cheaper fuel for farmers and truckers is an urgent political priority for Trump.
The irony is plain. Just weeks ago, Trump signed legislation giving him sweeping powers to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries like India buying Russian oil. Hypocritical? Of course. But hypocrisy is part of international life. For all the grandstanding on global issues by major powers, we know that all politics is local.
For Delhi, better US-Russia relations could reduce the friction that its Russian partnership creates with Washington. Many would hope that, having carved out an exemption on diesel for himself, Trump would hesitate to impose fresh oil sanctions on India. More interesting, though, is the prospect of an entente between Washington and Moscow that Trump has long championed.
Trump’s desire for better relations with Russia is hardly a secret. In his first term, he pressed for Moscow’s return to the G8, which suspended Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. At Helsinki in 2018, he resisted calling Russia an adversary. He has repeatedly invoked the US-Soviet alliance in World War II as a sensible precedent for a new partnership.
But Trump’s first term also showed how difficult it is to build an internal American consensus on engagement with Russia. Democrats devoted considerable energy to portraying Trump as “Putin’s puppet” and arguing that Russian interference had helped put him in the White House. After taking the House in 2019, they pursued investigations into his Russian connections. If Democrats regain Congress, or even the House, they could use investigations, sanctions legislation and control over spending to obstruct a rapprochement with Moscow. Entrenched Republican opposition to concessions for Putin adds another constraint.
Some on America’s Christian right favour engagement with Putin, whom they see as a defender of traditional Western values against liberal cultural extremism. But that support cannot overcome the wider opposition.
Despite Washington’s well-known resistance to Russian engagement, Trump wasted no time in his second term pursuing better relations with Russia. Talks in Riyadh in February 2025 reopened high-level engagement. Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, offered opportunities in energy, Arctic development and minerals. The Alaska summit that August brought the two presidents together but failed to end the war so far.
Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met Putin in Moscow last month. Trump could meet Putin at November’s APEC summit in Shenzhen, where the Kremlin has floated a meeting including China’s Xi Jinping. He might also host Putin at December’s G20 summit in Miami. Moscow has yet to accept that invitation. Neither encounter is assured, but the diplomatic possibilities are expanding.
Commerce is central to Trump’s outreach to Russia. He wants economic cooperation to open a path to peace, rather than follow a settlement. Profitable ventures, he believes, can soften political antagonisms. American access to Russian energy and minerals could create a constituency for better relations. Trump also sees the Ukraine war as an obstacle to business and has pressed Kyiv to stop attacking Russian refineries.
Putin has reasons to bargain. Sanctions relief promises revenue, investment and technology. Engagement with Washington restores standing and could reduce dependence on China. A settlement recognising Russian territorial gains would let him claim victory at home. But translating these shared interests into concrete results has proved difficult. Ukraine will resist a bargain that rewards invasion or compromises its security. Just as Asian countries worry about a US-China compact, Europeans fear that a Trump-Putin bargain could leave them exposed to Russia’s geopolitical assertions.
Three lessons follow for India. First, US-Russia relations are not static. Their confrontation need not last forever. Delhi should consider the opportunities from US-Russian cooperation as carefully as the costs of hostility. A thaw could ease American pressure on India’s Russian energy purchases and defence ties.
Second, Moscow does not see confrontation with America as a “sacred ideological obligation”, as some in Delhi might believe. Russia values engagement with America as a great-power peer, even if it is no economic equal. In the early 1990s, Russia’s eagerness to build relations with America pushed India down Moscow’s priorities. Delhi should remember that experience.
Third, India’s stakes in Europe have risen dramatically. Trade, technology, investment and defence give Delhi a direct interest in European stability. Even if Trump and Putin strike a deal, Russia’s confrontation with Europe could continue. An American-Russian accommodation would therefore meet only part of India’s needs.
Delhi should contribute wherever it can to peace in Ukraine. It should also encourage direct dialogue between Russia and Europe on ending the war in Ukraine and shaping a sustainable security order in Europe and more broadly in Eurasia.
The writer is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express. He is professor and director at the Motwani Jadeja Institute of American Studies, Jindal Global University, Delhi
