India’s foreign policy has long been marketed as “strategic autonomy.” However, deal with Ukraine has now exposed that slogan as calculated opportunism. While New Delhi continues to benefit from Russian oil, weapons, spares and strategic goodwill, it is quietly expanding defence cooperation with Moscow’s battlefield adversary Ukraine. India’s defense ties and technology exchanges with Ukraine irk Russia primarily by undercutting Moscow’s geopolitical leverage and eroding its long-standing monopoly over India’s military hardware. By engaging Kyiv for critical maintenance, aero-engines, and battlefield technologies, India deliberately reduces its traditional dependence on Russia. Modi’s August 2024 visit to Ukraine marked a key shift, with both sides agreeing to hold the second India-Ukraine Joint Working Group on Military-Technical Cooperation in India. By April 2026, the track had matured further. In April 2026, President Zelenskyy stated that a security cooperation arrangement with India was being finalized. Taken together, these moves end the fiction that India’s Ukraine outreach is limited to humanitarian aid or peace diplomacy. It was no smaller exposure of Indian dual game. Publicly, New Delhi reassures the Kremlin of “time-tested ties.” Privately, it mines Ukraine for technologies that were proven on the battlefield against Russian systems. Since 2021, India considered Ukraine as a parallel supply chain for its vast Soviet-origin inventory. Now the ambition is wider! India now seeks deeper cooperation in missile seeker heads, air defence refurbishment, artillery, An-32 spares, aero-engines, marine gas turbines, drones, and electronic warfare and counter-UAS systems. Ukraine’s wartime experience offers India battlefield-tested technologies without openly breaking with Russia. Kyiv has spent three years adapting Soviet legacy hardware to fight Russia’s newer platforms. For India, which still operates Su-30MKIs, MiG-29s, T-72s, and An-32s, that experience is invaluable.
India’s multi-alignment strategy, which recently extended to logistics pacts and deeper partnerships with the US, France, and Ukraine, signals to Moscow that India will not be relegated to Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence, especially as Russia grows increasingly dependent on China.
India’s posture is calculated opportunism. India reassures Moscow publicly, extracts capability from Kyiv quietly and reduces Russian leverage while keeping Western capitals engaged. Russia remains India’s largest arms supplier and a critical source of discounted crude. Yet Moscow also controls the tap for spares, upgrades, and future platforms like the Su-57. By building a Ukrainian track, New Delhi is using Kyiv to reduce Moscow’s leverage over India’s Soviet/Russian-origin military inventory. If Russia delays spares or links sales to political demands, India now has a wartime-tested alternative ecosystem. Indo-Ukrainian defence cooperation exposes the limits of India-Russia trust. Moscow may still offer India the Su-57 or joint production of BrahMos-II, but Russia may sell India the Su-57, but India is already exploring Ukraine’s battlefield-proven defence ecosystem. That sends a message: Delhi will not be hostage to a single vendor. India’s Ukraine track is obvious military hedging
The West sees India as a counterweight to China and welcomes any move that diversifies Delhi away from Moscow. Ukraine gets a defence partner with scale and funds. India gets technology, leverage, and a hedge. For decades, India insisted it would not choose sides. Today, it is choosing all sides, simultaneously. That may serve India’s short-term capability gaps. But it carries costs. How can Russia ignore this duality? The “special and privileged strategic partnership” cannot survive if one partner funds and equips the other’s battlefield enemy. In past, Russia has been highly agitated by reports that European buyers diverted artillery shells manufactured in India to support Ukraine’s war effort. Moscow has expressed strong diplomatic protests, while New Delhi has avoided intervening aggressively to halt this indirect trade. India’s multi-alignment strategy, which recently extended to logistics pacts and deeper partnerships with the US, France, and Ukraine, signals to Moscow that India will not be relegated to Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence, especially as Russia grows increasingly dependent on China. Feelings of Indian unreliability also persist in Western quarters, as well as those who expected disengagement of New Delhi from Moscow after the Ukraine war. Being a member of QUAD, India bluffed them as well. This diplomatic cunningness has shown the hypocritical and opportunist side of India to the international community.
The writer is a freelance columnist.