The strategic community in Delhi celebrated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 2025 India visit as evidence of both Delhi’s privileged partnership with Moscow and India’s strategic autonomy. Indian rhetoric about strategic autonomy, however, often provides cover for delusional indecisiveness in foreign policy matters, which in turns leads to sporadic friction with countries most suited as India’s strategic partners.
If Delhi wishes to leverage Russia against the United States, its decisions can impact its relationships with smaller powers like Israel.
The choice between the West on one hand and the Soviet Union or Russia on the other has long sparked intellectual somersaults among Indian strategists about abstract notions of non-alignment, multi-alignment, and, most recently, strategic autonomy. The mistake some in Delhi make is to assume the choice impacts only the largest powers. If Delhi wishes to leverage Russia against the United States, its decisions can impact its relationships with smaller powers like Israel.
Russia has long engaged Hamas. Moscow perceives the Middle Eastern matrix through an ideological lens. It seeks to undermine the U.S.-led liberal world order. In Putin’s words, it is an “ugly neo-colonial system” that the world should replace with a multi-polar order. Russia aims to bring down the liberal world order by aligning with those state and non-state actors that are inimical not only to American but also Israeli interests.
This merely repeats the Cold War geopolitical orientation. The Soviet secret service financed, trained, and equipped anti-Western and anti-Israeli terrorist groups in the region. After the 1967 Six-Day war, the Soviets severed ties to Israel; they remained suspended until 1991. Russia, its successor state, adopted a more flexible approach in the 1990s and 2000s. It maintained cordial relations with Israel, projected itself as a mediator and condemned Hamas terrorist attacks, even though Russia never designated Hamas as a terrorist group. In 2006, Putin invited Hamas commander Khaled Mashal to Moscow after Hamas’s electoral victory over Fatah.
In 2006, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov called Hamas a humanitarian organization, but condemned its acts of terror. Since then, Hamas leaders have regularly visited Russia, and sometimes even met with the Russian president. After the Ukraine War began, Russia’s tilt toward Hamas has become conspicuous. Siding with Hamas fits well with its larger anti-American vision. Putin sees the turmoil in the Middle East and the rise of anti-American sentiment as an advantage for Moscow.
During the Cold War, India’s socialist leanings, anti-Western foreign policy, and distinct tilt toward the Soviet bloc resonated in its Middle East policy; it did not have any official diplomatic ties with Israel until 1991. India dabbled with Arab nationalists and terrorist movements like the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose leader Yasser Arafat received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1988 and the first Indira Gandhi Award for International Justice and Harmony in 1992. After 1992, India’s Middle East policy changed, particularly after the rise of the Hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) government in 1998.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India and Israel have become strategic and counterterrorism partners.
After 2014, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India and Israel have become strategic and counterterrorism partners. This was evident when India used Israeli drones during the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict. A major reason for this change was Pakistan’s support for Kashmir terrorism. Since 1990, Pakistan-backed terrorism has killed hundreds of civilians and soldiers. However, India still has a Cold War hangover, and continues to support the two-state solution, abstains from the United Nations’ voting on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and avoids designating Hamas a terrorist organization, even though Hamas and many other global jihadi organizations have deep-rooted ties with Pakistan-backed terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
As Russia’s romance with anti-Israeli forces continues, Jerusalem will likely pressure Delhi to designate Hamas as a terror group in the short run and make strategic choices vis-à-vis its ties with Russia in the long run. While India could avoid choosing sides on Ukraine because the Russia-Ukraine conflict does not directly impact India’s interests, the same is not true in Israel’s case, even more so since those forces that target Israel increasingly also threaten India.
