India and Pakistan exchanged heavy fire during the night, marking their worst confrontation since 2019 and increasing the fears of a total war between the two countries with nuclear weapons.
India shot missiles in Pakistan at dawn on Wednesday, qualifying it as a retaliation for the attack last month in which armed men delicate 26 people, mostly tourists, in back controlled by India. Pakistan said the attacks were equivalent to an act of war and launched a retaliation attack.
The Russian Foreign Ministry saying On Wednesday that he was “deeply concerned” about the situation and urged both countries to “show restriction.”
Russia also has sacrifice To mediate in the crisis, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, has calls from heroes with both sides last week.
In the midst of tensions, Moscow Times examines Russia’s relationship with both countries:
Russia-Indian relationship
In December 2023, India’s Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, callous The relationship of India-Russia is “a constant in world politics”, emphasizing the ties of the two countries with each other.
Russian support to India dates back to the 1950s, when the Soviet Union Used His veto of the UN Security Council in support of India on the subject of Kashmir.
Since then, the USSR and later Russia have played a mediating role between India and Pakistan, and the USSR supported India through the cold war.
However, while the group of British foreign affairs experts Chatham House says that the relationship between the two countries is currently experiencing a “administered decrease”, Moscow and New Delhi remain important partners in several areas.
The trade between the two countries increased to $ 66 billion in 2024, with the view to the $ 100 billion by 2030.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited Russia twice in the last year, and has Vladimir Putin 17 times in the last decade.
Russian oil, which represented only 2% of the total imports of India before the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow, has been larger to more than 40% from June 2024. In December, the two countries Written A 10 -year agreement and $ 13 billion to supply 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day to the dependence of the private Indian refiner.
The two countries also cooperate in nuclear energy. Russia’s state nuclear energy supplier has a agreement Instead to build six nuclear energy reactors in India.
Russia and India are also deeply involved when it comes to defense. Chatham House points out that Russia represents 50% of India’s military team and that India is the largest importer of Russian weapons worldwide.
Even so, India has tried to walk a diplomatic tightrope when it comes to the Russian war against Ukraine, Neith condemning or expressing support for the invasion. It has also been abstained numerous in UN resolutions condemning the actions of Moscow, and the country is the second largest supplier of critical technologies restricted to Russia.
Russia-Pakistan relationship
Russia-Pakistan’s relationship has been presented in recent years after the pro-western prokistan orientation during the Cold War.
Bilateral trade reached $ 1 billion in 2023, the highest level between the two countries, and the Vice Primer Russian Minister Alexei Overchuk said in 2024 that Russia would support the inclusion of Pakistan in the BRICS economic bloc.
“Pakistan-Russian relationships from [2011] They have been moving in an ascending trajectory, however slowly, “Muhammad Murad, a PH.D. political science candidate at Bonn University, written In the diplomat.
In 2017, Islamabad united The Shanghai cooperation organization directed by Moscow and led by Beijing in an effort to deepen its regional cooperation.
Four years later, Russia and Pakistan signed An agreement to build a gas pipe from Karachi to Lahore.
“Despite the growing ties between Islamabad and Moscow, there is still a certain level of distrust between the two countries due to Pakistan’s neutral position on the Russia-Ukraine war and its supposed supply of weapons to Ukraine.”
Pakistan supposedly soldier $ 364 million in arms to Ukraine and Israel for cover The financing gap required to finance a loan of international monetary fund (IMF). The county government has Denied Than the sale place.
While Pakistan has been abstained three times for voting for UN resolutions that would condemn Russia’s behavior in Ukraine, he has asked that Ukraine’s sovereignty be respected.
Prashant Singh, a Delhi-based researcher, sees Russia-Pakistan’s relations from another angle.
“There is a constant: the relations of Pakistan-Russia have always acted as a subset of the regional geopolitical pentagon composed of Russia, the United States, China, India and Pakistan,” Hey written In the diplomat.
He pointed out that cooperation between the two countries is traditionally limited to energy, food security and counterterrorism, because weapons sales would anger India.
And just when approaching Moscow, Pakistan also depends on institutions backed by the West such as the IMF for finance. As recently as March, Pakistan recurrent The approval to ensure $ 1.3 billion in funds as part of an ongoing program of 37 months that, he said, helped the country to avoid the threat of breach.
