The Russia-Ukraine war started exactly two years ago. The very next day, on February 25, 2022, India abstained from voting on a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council. In the course of the ongoing war, New Delhi has been abstaining from taking clear sides, much to the chagrin of establishments in both the European Union and the United States. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Ukraine, after a much-publicised visit to Moscow in July, in maintaining with India’s stated position of strategic neutrality, questions are being asked in global capitals about India’s motivations. This is the first time an Indian prime minister has visited an independent Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

There have been enough domestic discussions on India’s purported role in world peace and other grand enterprise. Let’s bring realism back into the game now.

Decoupling From West Is Not An Option

Domestic chatter aside, what the Western world – the US, EU, UK nexus – thinks about India’s stand on the Russia-Ukraine conflict does, indeed, matter to India. No matter what the virulently nationalist ecosystem clamours for, decoupling from the West is not an option for India. It is not merely about diplomatic grandstanding. Since 2014, PM Modi has been making diplomatic and cultural gestures to bolster India-EU relations. There have been increased levels of engagement to secure crucial strategic and economic partnerships between India and the EU member states. While India’s relationship with Ukraine may not have been headline-making historically, its implications have not been any less significant. That explains why India has consistently decried Russian aggression against Ukraine.

With his visit to Kyiv, PM Modi may be revealing India’s growing transactions with the EU member states for its defence and strategic needs. After all, the Russian manpower and machines have put up a dismal performance in the current theatre. It’s high time Indian generals stopped defending the Russian infrastructure just because they, too, are dependent on it and must swear by its fierceness. India has options for its defence and modernisation needs and must use them. After all, what use are partnerships like the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) that the EU set up with India in April 2022?

Exports From Russia Are Dwindling

It needs to be brought back into the picture that India’s arms procurement from Russia saw a significant drop in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The trend has been continuing, and as per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest reports, Russian exports to India have sharply declined from 76% in 2009–2013 to 36% in 2019-2024. While India remains the Russian arms industry’s biggest market, it’s also shopping from elsewhere, and that cart is getting bigger. A war-stressed Moscow is unlikely to meet New Delhi’s growing defence needs owing to the latter’s neighbourhood concerns.  

Au contraire, other countries are pushing their catalogues for New Delhi to browse. The French are coming hot and sexy with their Rafael jets and a “defence industrial roadmap” to jointly design and develop mechanical infrastructure. India and France have joined hands in building submarines, combat aircraft engines, and multi-role helicopters. Ukraine, accounting for 11% of India’s total defence imports, too, is an important partner. India is also deepening defence and security ties with countries like South Korea, South Africa and Poland. It is no coincidence that PM Modi made a pit stop in Poland before heading to Ukraine.

A Wise Move By India

By maintaining its stance of strategic neutrality, India is securing self-interest-driven allies in Europe and Asia without the overlordship of the US. It is a wise move on India’s part in keeping with the ever-looming shadow of China in the neighbourhood.  The US has exhibited reluctance to share crucial defence technology with India despite promises and agreements, like the one between General Electric and Indian partners for technology to power the new fleet of fighter jets. India knows better than to rely on the US, a country that holds its military-industrial complex dearer than any ideological principle. 

It is clear that India—while being on “the side of peace”—is keeping its national interests above everything else. Mykhailo Podolyak, a presidential adviser in Ukraine, acknowledges that India “really has a certain influence” over Russia. It is this reputation that India aims to, ought to capitalise on in its attempt to emerge as a dependable global negotiator. Only those who have power can negotiate, the rest only nudge. 

The timing for Modi’s Ukraine visit is almost perfect. India is not expected to use a magic wand to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. The military situation remains hot. Even minor dialling down of fighting, if at all, will be enough for India’s influence optics. No significant developments in the region can be expected till the US elects its next president. Till the US gets its house in order and views its NATO obligations afresh, the window is open for India to pedal hard towards its strategic goals—choosing realism over idealism and empty talk. 

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

The Russia-Ukraine war started exactly two years ago. The very next day, on February 25, 2022, India abstained from voting on a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council. In the course of the ongoing war, New Delhi has been abstaining from taking clear sides, much to the chagrin of establishments in both the European Union and the United States. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Ukraine, after a much-publicised visit to Moscow in July, in maintaining with India’s stated position of strategic neutrality, questions are being asked in global capitals about India’s motivations. This is the first time an Indian prime minister has visited an independent Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

There have been enough domestic discussions on India’s purported role in world peace and other grand enterprise. Let’s bring realism back into the game now.

Decoupling From West Is Not An Option

Domestic chatter aside, what the Western world – the US, EU, UK nexus – thinks about India’s stand on the Russia-Ukraine conflict does, indeed, matter to India. No matter what the virulently nationalist ecosystem clamours for, decoupling from the West is not an option for India. It is not merely about diplomatic grandstanding. Since 2014, PM Modi has been making diplomatic and cultural gestures to bolster India-EU relations. There have been increased levels of engagement to secure crucial strategic and economic partnerships between India and the EU member states. While India’s relationship with Ukraine may not have been headline-making historically, its implications have not been any less significant. That explains why India has consistently decried Russian aggression against Ukraine.

With his visit to Kyiv, PM Modi may be revealing India’s growing transactions with the EU member states for its defence and strategic needs. After all, the Russian manpower and machines have put up a dismal performance in the current theatre. It’s high time Indian generals stopped defending the Russian infrastructure just because they, too, are dependent on it and must swear by its fierceness. India has options for its defence and modernisation needs and must use them. After all, what use are partnerships like the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) that the EU set up with India in April 2022?

Exports From Russia Are Dwindling

It needs to be brought back into the picture that India’s arms procurement from Russia saw a significant drop in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The trend has been continuing, and as per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest reports, Russian exports to India have sharply declined from 76% in 2009–2013 to 36% in 2019-2024. While India remains the Russian arms industry’s biggest market, it’s also shopping from elsewhere, and that cart is getting bigger. A war-stressed Moscow is unlikely to meet New Delhi’s growing defence needs owing to the latter’s neighbourhood concerns.  

Au contraire, other countries are pushing their catalogues for New Delhi to browse. The French are coming hot and sexy with their Rafael jets and a “defence industrial roadmap” to jointly design and develop mechanical infrastructure. India and France have joined hands in building submarines, combat aircraft engines, and multi-role helicopters. Ukraine, accounting for 11% of India’s total defence imports, too, is an important partner. India is also deepening defence and security ties with countries like South Korea, South Africa and Poland. It is no coincidence that PM Modi made a pit stop in Poland before heading to Ukraine.

A Wise Move By India

By maintaining its stance of strategic neutrality, India is securing self-interest-driven allies in Europe and Asia without the overlordship of the US. It is a wise move on India’s part in keeping with the ever-looming shadow of China in the neighbourhood.  The US has exhibited reluctance to share crucial defence technology with India despite promises and agreements, like the one between General Electric and Indian partners for technology to power the new fleet of fighter jets. India knows better than to rely on the US, a country that holds its military-industrial complex dearer than any ideological principle. 

It is clear that India—while being on “the side of peace”—is keeping its national interests above everything else. Mykhailo Podolyak, a presidential adviser in Ukraine, acknowledges that India “really has a certain influence” over Russia. It is this reputation that India aims to, ought to capitalise on in its attempt to emerge as a dependable global negotiator. Only those who have power can negotiate, the rest only nudge. 

The timing for Modi’s Ukraine visit is almost perfect. India is not expected to use a magic wand to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. The military situation remains hot. Even minor dialling down of fighting, if at all, will be enough for India’s influence optics. No significant developments in the region can be expected till the US elects its next president. Till the US gets its house in order and views its NATO obligations afresh, the window is open for India to pedal hard towards its strategic goals—choosing realism over idealism and empty talk. 

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Abortions were banned under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin but a commonplace under later Kremlin leaders. Now, after less than a century, official attitudes about abortion in Russia are changing once again.

Although abortion is still legal and widely available, new restrictions are being considered as President Vladimir Putin takes an increasingly socially conservative turn and seeks to reverse Russia’s declining population.

Having embraced the Russian Orthodox Church, he is stressing “traditional family values” — often used as code words to differentiate his country from Western social attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights and other policies.

Abortion restrictions in Russia spark outrage as the country takes a conservative turn

Some see it as a throwback to the Stalinist era, when abortion was outlawed in 1936, and women ending unwanted pregnancies often turned to illegal and unsafe procedures.

“My grandmother worked as a teacher in a vocational school. She was telling me stories about abortions being performed with wardrobe hangers in the dormitories,” said Lina Zharin, a psychotherapist and feminist activist in Kaliningrad, where lawmakers are considering banning abortion in private clinics.

“Seemingly, everyone knows about it, about how scary it was, and I think that a lot of people are surprised and outraged that we’re going back to it,” she said.

Two years after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, authorities reversed the ban to curtail dangerous illegal abortions. But they didn’t endorse contraceptives, says Michele Rivkin-Fish, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with the government remaining “pro-natalist” and wanting women to have children while staying in the workforce.

Abortion became a common way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy amid the harsh Soviet economy, even though Mr. Rivkin-Fish said conditions at clinics often were “terrible.”

“Anesthesia was in short supply. … There was no privacy — you would have your abortion with other people in the ward,” she said. Painkillers were of low quality or scarce, she added, “so women were often in excruciating pain.”

Under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, a movement for family planning and adequate birth control was launched in the late 1980s by physicians who were mostly women, according to Mr. Rivkin-Fish.

After the USSR’s 1991 demise, President Boris Yeltsin funded family planning and birth control programmes, and doctors were trained to prescribe and administer contraceptives.

Also read: Explained | What do Indian laws say about Abortion?

“They all went through a federal family planning course that I taught and led,” said Dr. Lyubov Yerofeyeva, a gynaecologist and a reproductive health specialist at the core of the effort.

By the late 1990s, federal funding fizzled because of conservative opposition. Abortion regulations remained less restrictive, however. Women could terminate a pregnancy until 12 weeks without any conditions, and until 22 weeks for many “social reasons,” such as divorce, unemployment or low income.

In 2003, the authorities cut that list to just four: if a woman was raped, if she was in prison, if her parental rights were restricted, or if her husband died or became severely disabled during her pregnancy.

“This was the first sign that I saw that the government is concerned about lowering abortion rates, and they’re going to do so through access, restricting access,” Mr. Rivkin-Fish said.

Conservative law-makers proposed more restrictions in 2011, including that women need permission from their husbands or from their parents if underage; that doctors could refuse abortion if they opposed it; and that a woman must wait two to seven days, depending on the stage of pregnancy, to give her a chance to change her mind.

Ms. Yerofeyeva and a reproductive health group she ran, Russian Association of Population and Development, pushed back against these proposals, and only two were adopted nationally: allowing doctors to refuse if against their beliefs, and the mandatory waiting period of 48 hours to a week.

In 2012, the number of “social reasons” for allowing abortion between weeks 12 and 22 was cut to just in the case of rape.

Under Health Ministry regulations adopted in 2015-16, doctors had to offer women the chance to listen to the “fetal heartbeat” and show them ultrasound images. They also changed an abortion consent form to emphasize its risks, “the possibility of not resorting to it, and the preference of carrying a pregnancy to term.”

Ms. Yerofeyeva’s Russian Association for Population and Development was declared a “foreign agent” — a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong negative connotations — and soon ceased activities.

Last year, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova ordered the Health Ministry to look into banning abortions for those under 18 without parental consent.

In a speech to Parliament this year, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko criticised women who prioritise education and careers over childbearing and supported an abortion ban in private clinics — where up to 20% occurred in recent years. He also moved to restrict abortion pills, which are approved to be taken to end a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks.