Russia names India, China main allies in foreign policy

Ajay Banerjee

New Delhi, March 31

Russia today said it would expand relations with India and China on trade, policy, technology and strategic partnership. It offered “peaceful co-existence” to the US and asked it to shun its anti-Russia stance while justifying its actions in Ukraine.

Focus on…

• Increasing volume of bilateral trade, strengthening investment & technological ties
• Ensuring resistance to “destructive actions” of “unfriendly” states and their alliances

Moscow released “The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation”, its first change since 2016, signed as a decree by President Vladimir Putin.

The concept said “Russia will continue to build a particularly privileged strategic partnership with India with a view to enhancing and expanding cooperation in all areas on a mutually beneficial basis”.

Russia will place special emphasis on India for increasing the volume of bilateral trade, strengthening investment and technological ties, and ensuring resistance to “destructive actions” of “unfriendly” states and their alliances.

It does not specify if these “unfriendly states” denote those “unfriendly” to India or those “unfriendly” to Russia.

Mentioning China, the Russian policy goes a step further and says it “will be looking at development of mutually beneficial cooperation in all areas, provision for mutual assistance, and enhancement of coordination in the international arena to ensure security, stability and sustainable development at the global and regional levels”.

“Russia aims at further strengthening the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with China,” the policy states. On the US, the Russian policy says “complicating normalisation of relations between Russia and European states is the strategic course of the US”. Moscow blamed the US for trying to limit the sovereignty of European states and ensure US global domination.

“The US-Russian relations depend on the extent to which the US is ready to abandon its policy of power domination,” it states. On the clash with Ukraine, the document says “actions” were “to protect vital interests” but “the US and its satellites used the measures taken by Russia as a pretext to aggravate the longstanding anti-Russian policy and unleashed a new type of hybrid war”.