The Duran Podcast - Putin and Modi prepare for big meeting

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Putin and Modi prepare for big meeting

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Putin's trip to India, which I think is taking place in December. I don't know, has a date been announced? The Russian media are saying that it'll be the third and fourth of December, but this has not been officially confirmed. So the Trump White House has been going on and on about how India is moving away from Russia and how India is going to stop purchasing Russian oil, and they're going to get India on side. And here you have Putin, who is going to be making a big trip to India to meet with his close friend Modi and his close ally in India. And my understanding of things is that there are going to be some very big deals signed, especially in the military space.

But I imagine definitely energy is going to be discussed. and oil is going to be discussed. Well, quite right. I mean, I should say there's been lots of articles which have been clearly planted in the financial media, Bloomberg, other places, Reuters, talking about how India is reducing imports of oil from Russia. It probably is, but the Russian ambassador to India,

who's an interesting man, by the way, and we'll talk about him some other time. But anyway, he's saying that India is continuing to buy it. oil from Russia and that Russia remains India's major supplier of oil and will continue to be so going into the future. And the Russian energy minister, Alexander Novak, has said that Russian oil production remains stable and that he too expects that the Indian-Russian oil trade will continue. And the report speak of Russian tankers, or at least not Russian tankers, but tankers with

Russian oil still steaming towards India. And certainly one Indian oil company has placed orders for Russian oil in December after the sanctions are supposed to come into force. The sanctions against luke oil and Rosnev are supposed to come into force. Anyway, this is a complex intrigue. I'm going to say straightforwardly, I think the. Indians who are trying at the moment to negotiate a trade deal with the United States probably are rowing back somewhat on Russian oil purchases, despite apparently a big discount that the Russians

are offering. But by spring, I suspect that everything will be back to normal. There'll probably be all kinds of workarounds arranged. Maybe Russian oil will be sent and it will be called Kazakh oil or something of that kind. But one way or the other, I think this business will continue. Now, Putin is, this trip to India has been discussed a lot between the Indians and the Russians over the last year. It's supposed to be taking place in December. There's no word that has been postponed or called off. One might have expected that the United States would want to have it called off, but it seems not.

There is apparently a massive, a huge number of agreements that have been prepared in draft for Modi and Putin to sign. One is for co-production between India and Russia of Suhoi 57, fifth generation, sighted fighter jets in India. Apparently, I mean, I should say that there's a long story here because India originally was part of the Suhoi 57 program way back when it was first unveiled in the early 2000s.

Then he pulled out for all sorts of reasons. and stuff of which probably were not really particularly good reasons. But anyway, they pulled out. Now it seems they're coming back. There's going to be some changes to the Suhoi 57 to make it more suitable for the Indians to use. Apparently they want a two-seat version of it. I'm not going to get into the details of that. But anyway, they want to be able to produce Suhoi 57s in India.

And it's a fifth generation fighter jet. India has not been able to develop its own fifth generation fighter jet. It's apparently been offered F-35s by the United States, but the US is not prepared to make technology transfers. Russia is, and that makes this a much more attractive deal for India. India also wants to buy more S4. 400 air defense missiles. They did very well, apparently, in the clash with Pakistan a few months ago. So India wants those. There's probably many other types of weapons that India wants

to buy from Russia too, probably drone technology, all kinds of things we can just wait and see. But there are lots of other proposals as well, apparently. The civilian cooperation on nuclear power on even I've seen a suggestion that India might provide guest workers to go to Russia, to work in Russian factories to make up for labor shortages there. So, you know, major agreements. Also, I should say, in agriculture, that India and Russia are working towards building up a relationship in agriculture too. So a major effort by India and Russia to get their economic relationship back on track. Back in the 1960s and 70s and 80s, the Soviet Union and India had a very, very strong economic relationship

and a very strong scientific, technological and military-industrial relationship too. the Modi government appears to want to revive that, and of course, the Russians are keen to do it too. I mean, this flies in the face of everything Trump has been saying it, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Of course it does. Right, right. You know, peeling India off of its relationship with Russia and Bricks. It's not the case. No, it's not the case. One could see this. We can see the reasons for this. I mean, there's a number of reasons here why this is happening.

Firstly, when Modi became prime minister, first became prime minister, I remember he came to the United States, he addressed Congress. I know that the Indians were hoping at that time that there would be an enormous flood of U.S. investment into India, similar to the huge U.S. investment that went into China in the 1980s and 1990s. The Indians apparently have been very disappointed that it hasn't happened to anything like the extent that they expected that it would. So there is that factor. The other thing is that Russia has a long history of providing India with advanced technology. I mean, the Soviet Union created, for example, India's fighter.

jet industry in the 1960s. There was a factory set up in the 1960s by the Soviet Union, which enabled India to build MiG21 fighter jets. And that was a big complex. The Russians have provided India with a lot of technology, advanced military technology before. They're much more willing to do that than the United States is. So again, that makes the relationship with Russia, a lot more attractive. But there's also the factor of balancing. India, I think, is deeply committed to the bricks. I think this is underestimated by many people. I think there's a sense that India is somehow semi-detached from the bricks. I think on the contrary, India feels that being a member of bricks is very important for India because it helps India in its relationship.

with China. It helps India to mediate its relationship with China. If India left the bricks, then the bricks would become a Chinese system. And that's not what India wants. And India anyway, at some level, wants to improve its relations with China, which is now, by the way, its biggest trade partner. So India wants to remain in bricks, but it's also rivalous with China. So it wants to balance, it wants a balance within bricks. And the way to achieve that balance is by developing a strong relationship with Russia. And that's where I think this all stems from. And of course, last but not least, and not to be discounted,

Modi and Putin get on extremely well with each other. They're obviously friends. There's none of the prickles and problems that there is in the relationship between Modi and Trump. So, again, feelings of friendship, maybe they're not the key reason why states and governments do certain things, but they're not to be discounted entirely. Yeah, the relationship between Modi and Trump was good. until Trump decided to go after Modi, to make fun of Modi, to make fun of India, effectively, right? I forgot what he called India. He called them like a third-rate country or something.

A dead economy. Dead economy, yeah, that's it. Yeah. And all that's it. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, that was all of Trump's doing right there, right? Yes. And then constantly, constantly pestering India about the Russian oil.

I mean, just didn't stop every day. We stopped buying Russia. I mean, okay, Modi got sick of it, I think. Absolutely. The other thing is, of course, the U.S. has also, Trump has also appeared to be very keen to develop good relations with Pakistan. He had, I think, was at a working breakfast with Pakistan's military chief, who is an unpopular figure in India, to put it mildly. None of that went down very well with Modi or indeed with the Indian public generally. By the way, there have just been elections in India in one of the big states, Bihar, poor state. And India's, there was speculation that Modi's party wouldn't do so well. In the event, they won an absolute enormous landslide. They crushed it. And I can't help but think that this is partly because, you know, the Indian public feels that Modi is standing up for India,

is trying to make sure that energy costs in India remain as low as they can be. They want food from Russia and all of that. So I think this has consolidated Modi's popularity and bolster his position. Oh, let's not forget the comments from Trump about solving the conflict between India and Pakistan as well. Absolutely. Where Modi got very angry with all of his statements about that. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that Modi felt very betrayed about that, actually.

That did a lot of damage. A lot of damage. It made India seem weaker than it really was. And I can't imagine that any government would be happy about something like that, especially not in a government like India. Yeah. All right. We will end it there. The durand.com.

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