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      Marina Ovsyannikova, Russian TV protester, decries Putin propaganda

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      Marina Ovsyannikova, Russian TV protester, decries Putin propaganda‘I could see security dragging people away,’ says editor fined for walking into shot with sign saying ‘No War’

      Ukraine: live coverage
      00:17The Russian TV editor who interrupted a news broadcast to protest the Ukraine war said on Sunday she acted out of dissatisfaction at propaganda disseminated by Vladimir Putin’s government, and said she had turned down an offer of asylum in France despite fearing further retaliation.‘Tucker the Untouchable’ goes soft on Putin but remains Fox News’s biggest powerRead moreMarina Ovsyannikova, who describes herself as “a patriot”, was fined 30,000 roubles ($280) by a court in Moscow last week for the “spontaneous” act of rebellion in which she appeared during the live newscast with a sign saying “No War”.On Sunday, she told ABC’s This Week she needed to speak out after watching her employer, Channel One, spread “lies” about the Ukraine war.“After a week of coverage of this situation, the atmosphere on the channel was so unpleasant that I realised that I could not go back there,” she said. “I could see what in reality was happening in Ukraine. And what we showed on our programmes was very different from what was going on in reality.”She said the knowledge the channel was imparting false information ate away at her.“I could not believe that such a thing could happen, that this gruesome war could take place. And as soon as the war began, I could not eat. I could not sleep,” she said, adding that she had considered joining public protests in Moscow.“I could see security dragging people away … and I decided that this was going to be a rather useless action on my part. Maybe I could do something more meaningful, with more impact, where I could show to the rest of the world that Russians are against the war.“And I could show to the Russian people that this is just propaganda, expose this propaganda for what it is and maybe stimulate some people to speak up against the war.”Marina Ovsyannikova broke the state propaganda machine – others will follow | Denis KataevRead moreOvsyannikova, who could face further action after the Kremlin suggested she breached rules on “hooliganism”, said the French president Emmanuel Macron offered her asylum but she turned it down.“I am very worried for the safety of my children, first and foremost. And I’m very grateful to Mr Macron for his offer, but I have publicly refused to take political asylum in France because I am a patriot,” she said.“I want to live in Russia. My children want to live in Russia. We had a very comfortable life in Russia. And I don’t want to immigrate and lose another 10 years of my life to assimilate in some other country.“And now I believe in the history of my country. The times are very dark and very difficult, and every person who has a civil position who wants to make that civil position known must speak up.”TopicsUkraineRussiaEuropeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Lessons from the Edge review: Marie Yovanovitch roasts Trump on Putin and Ukraine

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      Lessons from the Edge review: Marie Yovanovitch roasts Trump on Putin and Ukraine The former US ambassador’s memoir is timely and telling, as well as a fine story of a life in national serviceFor nearly a month, Vladimir Putin has delivered a daily masterclass in incompetence and brutality. The ex-KGB spymaster and world-class kleptocrat was the guy Donald Trump wanted to be. Just weeks ago, the former president lavished praise on his idol and derided Nato as “not so smart”.Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine in 2017, ex-ambassador says in bookRead moreHow’s that working out, Donald?The world cheers for Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukraine, his besieged country. Russia’s economy is on its knees, its stock market shuttered, its shelves bare. The rouble is worth less than a penny. The west is not as decadent or as flaccid as the tyrant-in-the-Kremlin and President Bone-Spurs bet.With impeccable timing, Marie Yovanovitch delivers Lessons from the Edge, her memoir. The author is the former US ambassador to Ukraine who Trump fired during his attempt to withhold aid to Kyiv in return for political dirt, an effort that got him impeached. For the first time.Yovanovitch tells a story of an immigrant’s success. But, of course, her short but momentous stint in the last administration receives particular attention.On the page, Yovanovitch berates Trump for “his obsequiousness to Putin”, which she says was a “frequent and continuing cause for concern” among the diplomatic corps. Trump, she writes, saw “Ukraine as a ‘loser’ country, smaller and weaker than Russia”. If only thousands of dead Russian troops could talk.Trump was commander-in-chief but according to Yovanovitch, he didn’t exactly have the best handle on where his soldiers were deployed.At an Oval Office meeting in 2017 with Petro Poroshenko, then president of Ukraine, Trump asked HR McMaster, his national security adviser, if US troops were deployed in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, territory now invoked by Putin as grounds for his invasion.“An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia,” Yovanovitch writes.In the moment, she says, she also pondered if it was “better to interpret Trump’s question as suggesting that the commander-in-chief thought it possible that US troops were fighting Russia-led forces, or instead as an indicator that the president wasn’t clear which country was on the other side of the war against Ukraine”.Let that sink in. And remember this. According to Mary Trump, the former president’s niece, Trump mocked his father as he succumbed to Alzheimer’s.Yovanovitch’s parents fled the Nazis, then the Soviets. She was born in Canada and her family moved to the US when she was three. Later she received an offer from Smith, an all-women’s school in Massachusetts, but opted for Princeton. It had gone co-ed less than a decade earlier but Yovanovitch counted on it being more fun.In her memoir, she devotes particular attention to snubs and put-downs endured on account of gender. One of her professors, a European history specialist, announced that he opposed women being admitted. After that, Yovanovitch stayed silent during discussion. It was only after she received an A, she writes, that the professor noticed her and made sure to include her. She really had something to say.Lessons from the Edge also recalls a sex discrimination lawsuit brought in 1976 by Alison Palmer, a retired foreign service officer, against the US Department of State. The case was settled, but only in 1989 and with an acknowledgment of past wrongs by the department.State had “disproportionately given men the good assignments”, Palmer said. Yovanovitch writes: “I felt – and still feel – tremendous gratitude to [her] for fighting for me and so many other women.”Yovanovitch would serve in Moscow and as US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Ukraine. She worked with political appointees and careerists. She offers particular praise for Republicans of an earlier, saner era.She lauds George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, for professionalism and commitment to country. Shultz reminded new ambassadors that “my” country meant the US, not their place of posting. He also viewed diplomacy as a constant effort, as opposed to a spasmodic intervention.Yovanovitch also singles out James Baker, secretary of state to George HW Bush, for helping the president forge a coalition to win the Gulf war.“Department folks found him cold and aloof,” Yovanovitch recalls. “But it was clear immediately that he was a master of diplomacy.”Baker showed flashes of idealism. The US stood for something. As younger men, both Shultz and Baker were marines.In marked contrast, Yovanovitch gives the Trump administration a thumping. She brands Rex Tillerson’s 14-month tenure as secretary of state as “near-disastrous”. As for Tillerson’s successor, Mike Pompeo, Yovanovitch lambasts his “faux swagger” and his refusal to defend her when she came under attack from Trump and his minions.Amid Trump’s first impeachment, over Ukraine, Yovanovitch testified: “The policy process is visibly unravelling … the state department is being hollowed out.”Loyalty to subordinates was not Pompeo’s thing – or Trump’s. “Lick what’s above you, kick what’s below you” – that was more their mantra. True to form, in 2020 Pompeo screamed at a reporter: “Do you think Americans give a fuck about Ukraine?”Two years later, they do. At the same time, Pompeo nurses presidential ambitions. Good luck with that.Yovanovitch rightly places part of the blame for Putin’s invasion on Trump.“He saw Ukraine as a pawn that could be bullied into doing his bidding,” she said in a recent interview. “I think that made a huge impact on Zelenskiy and I think that Putin and other bad actors around the world saw that our president was acting in his own personal interests.”What comes next for the US, Ukraine and Russia? Pressure mounts on the Biden administration to do more for Ukraine – at the risk of nuclear conflict. Congressional Republicans vote against aid to Zelenskiy but demand a more robust US response.Recently, Trump admitted that he was “surprised” by Putin’s “special military operation”. He “thought he was negotiating”, he said. A very stable genius, indeed.
      Lessons from the Edge is published in the US by Mariner Books
      TopicsBooksUS foreign policyUS national securityDonald TrumpTrump impeachment (2019)UkraineEuropereviewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Big oil could bring US gas prices down but won’t – so hit it with a windfall tax | Robert Reich

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      Big oil could bring US gas prices down but won’t – so hit it with a windfall taxRobert ReichIn the US, in times of crisis, the poor pay the price and the rich cash in. Democrats know it doesn’t have to be this way This morning I filled my car with gas, costing almost six dollars a gallon. My car is a Mini Cooper I bought years ago, partly because it wasn’t a gas-guzzler. Now it’s guzzling dollars.Putin and Trump have convinced me: I was wrong about the 21st century | Robert ReichRead moreWhen I consider what’s happening in Ukraine, I say what the hell. It’s a small sacrifice.Yet guess who’s making no sacrifice at all – in fact, who’s reaping a giant windfall from this crisis?Big oil has hit a gusher. Even before Vladimir Putin’s war, oil prices had begun to rise due to the recovery in global demand and tight inventories.Last year, when Americans were already struggling to pay their heating bills and fill up their gas tanks, the biggest oil companies (Shell, Chevron, BP, and Exxon) posted profits totaling $75bn. This year, courtesy of Putin, big oil is on the way to a far bigger bonanza.How are the oil companies using this windfall? I can assure you they’re not investing in renewables. They’re not even increasing oil production.As Chevron’s top executive, Mike Wirth, said in September, “We could afford to invest more” but “the equity market is not sending a signal that says they think we ought to be doing that.”Translated: Wall Street says the way to maximize profits is to limit supply and push up prices instead.So they’re buying back their own stock in order to give their stock prices even more of a boost. Last year they spent $38bn on stock buybacks – their biggest buyback spending spree since 2008. This year, thanks largely to Putin, the oil giants are planning to buy back at least $22bn more.Make no mistake. This is a direct redistribution from consumers who are paying through the nose at the gas pump to big oil’s investors and top executives (whose compensation packages are larded with shares of stock and stock options).Though it’s seldom discussed in the media, lower-income earners and their families bear the brunt of the burden of higher gas prices. Not only are lower-income people less likely to be able to work from home, they’re also more likely to commute for longer distances between work and home in order to afford less expensive housing.Big oil companies could absorb the higher costs of crude oil. The reason they’re not is because they’re so big they don’t have to. They don’t worry about losing market share to competitors. So they’re passing on the higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, and pocketing record profits.It’s the same old story in this country: when crisis strikes, the poor and working class are on the frontlines while the biggest corporations and their investors and top brass rake it in.What to do? Hit big oil with a windfall profits tax.The European Union recently advised its members to seek a windfall profits tax on oil companies taking advantage of this very grave emergency to raise their prices.Democrats just introduced similar legislation here in the US. The bill would tax the largest oil companies, which are recording their biggest profits in years, and use the money to provide quarterly checks to Americans facing sticker shock as inflation continues to soar.It would require oil companies producing or importing at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day to pay a per-barrel tax equal to half the difference between the current price of a barrel and the average price from the years 2015 to 2019.This is hardly confiscatory. Those were years when energy companies were already recording large profits. Quarterly rebates to consumers would phase out for individuals earning more than $75,000 or couples earning $150,000.Republicans will balk at any tax increase on big oil, of course. They and the coal-industry senator Joe Manchin even tanked the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to the Fed because she had the temerity to speak out about the systemic risks that climate change poses to our economy.But a windfall profits tax on big oil is exactly what Democrats must do to help average working people through this fuel crisis. It’s good policy, it’s good politics and it’s the right thing to do.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsOil and gas companiesOpinionOilCommoditiesEnergy industryUkraineRussiaUS domestic policycommentReuse this content More

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      Pressure mounts on Koch Industries to halt business in Russia

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      Pressure mounts on Koch Industries to halt business in RussiaWhile hundreds of companies have paused operations, three Koch subsidiaries are still operating in the country Pressure is mounting on Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by the rightwing billionaire Charles Koch, to pull out of Russia after it was revealed it was continuing to do business in Russia through three wholly-owned subsidiaries.Hundreds of companies including Coca-Cola, KPMG, McDonald’s, Netflix and Starbucks have paused operations in Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. But, as news site Popular Information revealed last week, three Koch subsidiaries are still operating in the country.Burger King owner says operator in Russia refuses to shut shopsRead more“Koch Industries is shamefully continuing to do business in Putin’s Russia and putting their profits ahead of defending democracy,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and Senator Ron Wyden, said in a joint statement. “As the democracies of the world make huge sacrifices to punish Russia for Putin’s illegal and vicious invasion of Ukraine, Koch Industries continues to profit off of Putin’s regime.”“It must stop,” Schumer wrote on Twitter, adding that he and Wyden were “exploring legislation to add Russia to existing laws denying foreign tax credits for taxes paid to North Korea & Syria.”Koch has defended its Russian operations. The company has three subsidiaries still operating in the country: Guardian Industries, a glass manufacturer; Molex, an electronic components manufacturer; and Koch Engineered Solutions, a provider of industrial products.In a statement released on Wednesday Dave Robertson, Koch president, condemned the invasion. “The horrific and abhorrent aggression against Ukraine is an affront to humanity,” he wrote. But he said the company would not “walk away” from its employees.“Koch company Guardian Industries operates two glass manufacturing facilities in Russia that employ about 600 people. We have no other physical assets in Russia, and outside of Guardian, employ 15 individuals in the country. While Guardian’s business in Russia is a very small part of Koch, we will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them (which is what the Wall Street Journal has reported they would do). Doing so would only put our employees there at greater risk and do more harm than good,” he wrote.Robertson said the company was “complying with all applicable sanctions, laws and regulations” and would continue to monitor the situation.The statement was released on the same day that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, made an address to Congress. “All American companies must leave their market immediately because it is flooded with our blood,” said Zelenskiy.The Kansas-based conglomerate – the second-largest private company in the US – is one of 40 companies “digging in” and refusing to leave Russia, according to a tally compiled by the Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team.Popular Information also revealed last week that a network of pundits and groups funded by Koch has been publicly advocating against imposing economic sanctions on Russia.TopicsKoch brothersUkraineUS politicsRussianewsReuse this content More

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      Saudi executions are glossed over for oil | Brief letters

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      Saudi executions are glossed over for oilImproved human rights | A chant for Putin | Dame Caroline Haslett | Boycotting P&O During his trip to Saudi Arabia, Boris Johnson praised the country’s improved human rights record (Boris Johnson upbeat on Saudi oil supply as kingdom executes three more, 16 March). As only three men were executed during his visit there, compared with 81 at the weekend, is that what Johnson means by an improving human rights record?Jim KingBirmingham During the Vietnam war, when Lyndon B Johnson was US president, demonstrators chanted daily outside the White House: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” The same question would no doubt be asked of Putin by Russians (Survivors leaving basement of Mariupol theatre after airstrike, say officials, 17 March), if they did not live yet again under a repressive dictatorship.David WinnickLondon Alas, Dame Caroline Haslett can’t quite claim Haslett Avenue, Crawley, in the name of balancing up memorials to women (Letters, 17 March). Crawley Development Corporation declared the new road in the name of her father, Robert, a popular railwayman, rather than the electrifying dame herself.John CoobanCrawley, West Sussex Can you publish a list of all companies owned by P&O and its parent firm DP World, so that we consumers can ensure we never use them again (‘Scandalous betrayal’: MPs condemn P&O Ferries for mass sacking of 800 staff, 17 March)?Michael Griffith-JonesLondonTopicsSaudi ArabiaBrief lettersBoris JohnsonHuman rightsMohammed bin SalmanOilUS politicsVladimir PutinlettersReuse this content More

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      Dispatch From Hungary: Can This Man Oust Viktor Orban?

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      BUDAPEST — On Tuesday, the day that the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity with a besieged Ukraine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of nearby Hungary, trumpeted his neutrality at a sprawling rally in Budapest.“We cannot get between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer,” he said. He accused the Hungarian opposition of trying to drag Hungary to war and vowed to send neither troops nor weapons to the battleground.State-aligned media — which, in Hungary, is almost all media — had been blasting out Kremlin talking points for weeks, and it was easy to find people in the crowd who echoed them. An older man in a traditional black Bocskai jacket described Russia’s invasion as “just” and Volodymyr Zelensky as “scum” before blaming George Soros and the Freemasons for the war. A middle-aged woman expressed sympathy for Ukrainian refugees but accused Ukraine of provoking Russia by oppressing Russian and Hungarian speakers. “You don’t wake a sleeping lion,” she said.Hungary’s opposition — which appears, for the first time in over a decade, to have a shot at ousting the authoritarian Orban — held a rally in Budapest on the same day, on the opposite side of the Danube.I’d met the opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of the southern Hungarian town of Hodmezovasarhely, the day before, as he worked on his speech. One of his central points, he said, was that Hungary must decide between two worlds: Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the liberal West. “Putin and Orban belong to this autocratic, repressive, poor and corrupt world,” Marki-Zay told me. “And we have to choose Europe, West, NATO, democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, a very different world. The free world.”Recently, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama made a number of highly optimistic predictions about how Russia’s war on Ukraine would play out. Russia, he wrote on March 10, faced outright defeat, and Putin wouldn’t survive it. Further, he wrote, “the invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who, prior to the attack, uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin,” including Donald Trump and Orban. The Hungarian elections on April 3 will be an early test of this theory.Just as Israelis from across the political spectrum united to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarians of many different ideological persuasions are working together to defeat Orban, a hero to many American conservatives for his relentless culture-warring.Hoping to neutralize Orban’s demagogy against urban elites, the Hungarian opposition has united behind Marki-Zay, a 49-year-old Catholic father of seven and a relative political outsider.Marki-Zay, who lived in Indiana from 2006 to 2009, often sounds like an old-school Republican. He favors lower taxes and a decentralized government. “We want to give opportunity and not welfare checks to people,” he told me.He believes in Catholic teachings on gay marriage, abortion and divorce but doesn’t think they should be law. “We cannot force our views on the rest of the society,” he said. “One big difference between Western societies and certain Islamist states is that in Western society, church doesn’t rule everyday life.” Some on the left might blanch at the gratuitous invocation of Islam, but part of Marki-Zay’s skill is using conservative language to make case for liberalism.In the coming elections, Marki-Zay is an underdog, but the fact that he’s even in the running is a remarkable development in a country with a system as tilted as Hungary’s. Hungarian electoral districts are highly gerrymandered in favor of Orban’s party, Fidesz. Gergely Karacsony, the left-leaning mayor of Budapest and a political scientist, said the anti-Orban forces would probably need to win the popular vote by three or four percentage points to achieve a parliamentary majority. (By contrast, in the last elections Fidesz was able to win a two-thirds majority with 49 percent of the vote.) The opposition has had to contend with a near blackout in the mainstream media; Marki-Zay said he hasn’t been asked to appear on television since 2019, while Orban has unleashed a barrage of propaganda against him.Fidesz, he said, has convinced its base that the opposition “will take away their pensions, will cancel the minimum wage,” will send their children to fight in Ukraine and will “allow sex change operations without the consent of parents” for kindergartners. These voters, said Marki-Zay, “are just frightened. They hate. I meet such people every day during this campaign. People who are just shouting profanities. You can feel the hatred, and you can see in their eyes how fearful they are of Orban losing the election.”But plenty of voters are still reachable via social media and door-to-door canvassing. Marki-Zay puts his chances at about 50 percent, and while other analysts I spoke to thought his odds were lower, no one wrote him off. A big question is whether the crisis in Ukraine will make voters prioritize stability or turn Orban’s relationship with Putin into a liability. In a recent Euronews poll, 60 percent of respondents said Hungary has gotten too close to Russia and Putin, but that doesn’t mean the issue will determine their vote.Even if Orban wins another term, Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, thinks Orban’s dream of creating a right-wing nationalist bloc in Europe is dead. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between him and the nationalist government in Poland, which favors an aggressive response to Russia.And a history of pro-Putin sentiment has suddenly become embarrassing for some of Orban’s European allies. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally — who received a nearly $12 million loan from a Hungarian bank tied to Orban — has been put on the defensive over campaign fliers showing her shaking Putin’s hand. Matteo Salvini, the head of Italy’s right-wing League party, was humiliated during a visit to Przemysl, a Polish town near the Ukrainian border, when the mayor confronted him with a pro-Putin T-shirt like one that Salvini once wore in Moscow’s Red Square.There was supposed to be a Hungarian version of America’s Conservative Political Action Conference this month, but it has been postponed until May. In Budapest, many speculated that American Republicans weren’t as keen as they once were to be seen with Orban. “Right now, I think because Orban has so much aligned himself with Russia, I think it’s detrimental to his international image as well,” said Kreko. “And he might win one more round, but I think he just will not be able to fulfill all his authoritarian dreams.”At the opposition rally, which drew tens of thousands of people, a band played a Hungarian version of Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power,” and Smith, who performed in Budapest last year, sent a video greeting. Ukrainian flags dotted the crowd.Bogdan Klich, the minority leader in Poland’s Senate, watched from backstage. He hoped that a Marki-Zay victory would be a blow to anti-democratic forces in his own country. “There is a chance that illiberal democracy, that was presented and unfortunately implemented by Viktor Orban here, will be replaced by traditional European and Atlantic values,” he said. “I mean the rule of law, the respect for human rights and civil liberties, independence of judiciary, etc. This is what we need here in Hungary, and in Poland.”Orban’s rise to power marked the beginning of the authoritarian populist era. If he somehow falls, it might mark the beginning of the end of it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      India’s Reasons For Abstaining in the UN on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

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      On February 26, the United Nations Security Council voted on a resolution proposed by the United States. Of the 15 members of the Security Council, 11 voted in favor and Russia unsurprisingly used its veto to kill the resolution. China, India and the United Arab Emirates abstained. Two days later, India abstained on a vote at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that set up an international commission of inquiry into Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The country also abstained at the UN General Assembly, which voted 141-5 to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

      India’s abstentions have led to much heartburn in the US and Europe. One high-flying national security lawyer in Washington argued that India was wrong to ignore Russia tearing down Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations. Like many others, he took the view that India has sided with an aggressive autocrat, weakened its democratic credentials and proved to be a potentially unreliable partner of the West. The Economist has called India “abstemious to a fault.”

      American Hypocrisy and Half-Measures Damn Ukraine and Help Russia

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      In particular, serving and retired American and British diplomats have been wringing their hands at India’s reticence to vote against Russia. For many Americans, this is a betrayal of the good faith that the US has reposed in India by giving the country a special nuclear deal in 2008 and designating India as a “major defense partner” in 2016. In 2018, the US elevated India to Strategic Trade Authorization tier 1 status, giving India license-free access to a wide range of military and dual-use technologies regulated by the Department of Commerce, a privilege the US accords to very few other countries. On Capitol Hill, India’s abstention is further viewed as an act of bad faith because many members of Congress and senators worked hard to waive sanctions against India. These were triggered by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act when India bought Russian S-400 missile systems. 

      Many Western business leaders are now wondering if India is a safe place to do business after the latest turn of events. For some in the West, this is yet another example of India slipping inexorably down the slippery slope of authoritarianism under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

      Two Unfriendly Nuclear Neighbors

      Such fears are overblown. India remains a thriving democracy. Elections just took place in five states after colorful political campaigns. Infrastructure development in India is going on at a record pace and growth remains high amidst inflationary pressures. Despite some blunders such as the 2016 demonetization of high-denomination currency notes and the botched 2017 rollout of the goods and services tax, the Modi-led BJP has become more market-friendly.

      As per the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report, India ranked 63 out of the surveyed 190 countries, a marked improvement from the 134 rank in 2014 when Modi came to power. Like the US, India is a fractious and, at times, exasperating democracy, but it is a fast-growing large economy. Even as US manufacturers Chevrolet and Ford exited the Indian market, Korean Kia and Chinese MG Motor India have achieved much success.

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      India is also proving to be a major force for stability in the region. After “America’s Afghanistan’s fiasco,” India has been picking up the pieces in an increasingly unstable region. The country is now providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people even as the US has abandoned them. Thousands of trucks roll out daily from India to Afghanistan via Pakistan as part of India’s effort to feed millions of starving Afghans. India is delivering 50,000 tons of wheat to a country led by the Taliban. Earlier, India sent 500,000 coronavirus vaccines as well as 13 tons of essential medicines and winter clothing to Afghanistan. Despite its reservations about the new regime in Kabul that offered refuge to hijackers of an Indian plane in 1999 and sent jihadists to Kashmir, a government branded as anti-Muslim by The New York Times is behaving magnanimously to help millions of Afghans facing starvation.

      Despite its thriving democracy and growing economy, India remains a highly vulnerable nation in an extremely rough neighborhood. To its west lies an increasingly more radical Pakistan that, in the words of the late Stephen Philip Cohen, uses “terror as an instrument of state policy in Kashmir.” To its east lies an increasingly aggressive China led by President Xi Jinping assiduously using salami-slicing tactics to claim more Indian territory. In sharp contrast to the US, India has two nuclear-armed neighbors and faces the specter of a two-front war given what Andrew Small has called the China–Pakistan axis.

      National security that occupies much headspace in Washington is a constant headache for New Delhi. Multiple insurgencies, street protests, mass movements, foreign interference and the specter of nuclear war are a daily worry. During the Cold War, Pakistan was an ally of the US and benefited greatly from American funding of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. A 1998 report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) tells us India was among the top three recipients of Soviet/Russian weapons from 1982 to 1996. 

      More recently, India has diversified its arms imports. A 2021 SIPRI fact sheet makes clear that India is now the biggest importer of French and Israeli arms. From 2011-15 to 2016-20 Russian arms exports to India dropped by 53%, but the country still remained the top importer. In 2016-20, Russia, France and Israel’s share of India’s arms imports comprised 49%, 18% and 13% respectively. A retired assistant chief of the integrated staff estimates that around 70% of India’s military arsenal is of Russian origin.

      Given Indian dependence on Russian military hardware, it is only natural that New Delhi cannot afford to annoy Moscow. Critical Russian spares keep the defense forces combat-ready. For high-tech weaponry, which has the added advantage of coming at affordable prices, India relies on Russia. Moscow has also shared software and proprietary interaction elements for weapons delivery systems with New Delhi. Furthermore, Russia allows India to integrate locally-made weapons into its fighter jets or naval vessels unlike the US or even France. 

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      From New Delhi’s point of view, the India–Russia military-technical cooperation is even more valuable than Russian military kit. Unlike the West, Russia has been willing to transfer technology, enabling India to indigenize some of its defense production. This began in the 1960s when India moved closer to the Soviet Union even as Pakistan became a full-fledged US ally. Since then, Moscow has shared critical technologies over many decades with New Delhi. India’s supersonic anti-ship missile BrahMos that the Philippines recently bought is indigenized Russian technology as is India’s main battle tank.

      As a vulnerable nation in a rough neighborhood, India relies on Russia for security. Therefore, New Delhi decided it could not upset Moscow and abstained at all forums.

      The China Factor

      There is another tiny little matter worrying India. It is certain that Xi is observing and analyzing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a revisionist power, China seeks to overturn the postwar order. Beijing has designs on Taiwan and territorial disputes with many of its neighbors. Its most recent armed confrontation occurred with India though. Since that June 2020 clash, Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a stalemate that repeated rounds of talks have failed to resolve.

      More than anyone else, India fears a Russia–China axis. If Moscow threw in its lot with Beijing, India — deprived of technology and critical spares — might face a military catastrophe. If Russia sided with China in case of a conflict between the two Asian giants, India would face certain defeat.

      Recent military cooperation between Russia and China has worried India. A few months ago, a flotilla of 10 Russian and Chinese warships circumnavigated Japan’s main island of Honshu for the very first time. This joint exercise demonstrated that Russia and China now have a new strategic partnership. Despite their rivalry in Central Asia and potential disputes over a long border, the two could team up like Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I. Such a scenario would threaten both Asia and Europe but would spell disaster for India. Therefore, New Delhi has been working hard to bolster its ties with Moscow.

      In December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to India to meet Modi. During Putin’s trip, both countries signed a flurry of arms and trade deals. Apart from declarations about boosting trade and investment as well as purchasing various military equipment, Russia transferred the technology and agreed to manufacture more than 700,000 AK-203 rifles in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh where the BJP has just been reelected. In the words of a seasoned Indian diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar, Putin’s visit “reinvigorated a time-tested strategic partnership between India and Russia.”

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      Sajjanhar left unsaid what astute Indian diplomats say in private. India’s close relationship with Russia is insurance against China. New Delhi wants Moscow to act as a moderating influence on Beijing and act as an honest broker between the two Asian giants. India believes that there is no power other than Russia that could act as its bridge to China.

      The Weight of History

      When Sajjanhar was speaking about a time-tested relationship, he meant decades of close India–Russia ties. During World War II and in the run-up to independence in 1947, the US earned much goodwill because Franklin D. Roosevelt championed the Atlantic Charter, promising independence to the colonies. However, relationships soured soon after independence because India chose socialism under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

      When the US conducted a coup against the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, India came to view the US as a neocolonial power. It is easy to forget now that Washington backed the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company over those of the government of Iran, triggering trepidation among Indian leaders who remembered clearly that their country was colonized by the British East India Company. The coup gave both capitalism and the US a bad name and pushed New Delhi closer to Moscow.

      In the following years, India’s ties with the Soviet Union strengthened. As Pakistan became a firm Cold War ally of the US, India embraced socialism ever more firmly and became a de facto Soviet ally, claims of non-alignment notwithstanding. In 1956, the Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Nehru censured Moscow in private but refused to condemn Soviet action even as he railed against the Anglo-French intervention in the Suez. As per Swapna Kona Nayudu’s well-researched paper for the Wilson Center, New Delhi now became “a crucial partner in international politics for Moscow.”

      In 1968, the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring, an uprising in then-Czechoslovakia that aimed to reform the communist regime. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, was prime minister, and she publicly called for the Soviets to withdraw their troops. In the UN Security Council, though, India abstained in the vote on the Czechoslovakia matter, attracting widespread condemnation from the American press.

      Three years later, India went to war with Pakistan to liberate Bangladesh. This did not go down well in the US, despite the fact that the military dictatorship of Pakistan was inflicting murder, torture and rape in a genocide of horrific proportions. During the 1971 India–Pakistan War, Richard Nixon called Gandhi a “bitch” and Henry Kissinger termed Indians as “bastards.” Indian diplomats repeatedly point out that Nixon and Kissinger ignored their own diplomats like Archer Blood who valiantly spoke truth to power about Pakistani atrocities, a story chronicled superbly by Princeton professor Gary J. Bass in “The Blood Telegram.” Instead, they sent vessels from the Seventh Fleet to intervene on Pakistan’s behalf. It was the Soviets who came to India’s rescue by sending their naval vessels to counter the American ones.

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      India repaid Moscow’s 1971 favor when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. In 1980, India refused to condemn this invasion at the UN. During the decade that followed, the US funded the mujahideen in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Relations between the US and Pakistan became closer than ever at a time when General Zia-ul-Haq launched Operation Tupac to “bleed India through a thousand cuts” by championing insurgencies within India. First Punjab and then Kashmir went up in flames. Terrorism became a feature of daily life for India, but the US turned a Nelson’s eye to the phenomenon until the grim attacks of September 11, 2001.

      Since those attacks, India and the United States have moved closer together. Thousands of Indian students study in the US every year, American investment has flowed into India and defense cooperation has steadily increased. The US views India as a valuable partner to contain the rise of an aggressive China, and New Delhi cares more about Washington than any other capital on the planet.

      Even as US–India ties have deepened, New Delhi has retained close ties with Moscow. Russia continues to build nuclear power plants in energy-hungry India. Plans to import more Russian oil and gas have also been in the works. Because of these ties, India did not condemn Russian action against Crimea in 2014. The left-leaning government in power at that time went on to say that Russia had “legitimate” interests in Ukraine.

      It is important to note that no opposition party has criticized the government’s position. Shashi Tharoor, a flamboyant MP of the Indian National Congress party who said that India was on “the wrong side of history,” got rapped on the knuckles by his bosses. The opposition and the government have almost identical views on the matter. Neither supports Russian aggression against Ukraine, but no party wants to criticize an old friend of the nation.

      Political Factors, Domestic and International

      War in Ukraine is obviously not in India’s interest. India imports energy, and rising oil prices are going to unleash inflation in an economy with high unemployment. This worries both political and business leaders. In its statement at the UN, India called for peace and diplomacy. In official statements, India has also expressed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. India does not in any way support Russian aggression but cannot criticize Moscow for a host of reasons described above as well as often overlooked political factors.

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      Indian leaders have also been preoccupied with elections in five critical states. Political analysts consider these elections to be a dress rehearsal for the 2024 national elections. With stakes so high, the ruling BJP was under pressure to bring home thousands of Indian students studying in Ukraine safely. For this, India relied on Russia. While some might say this necessitated a Faustian silence, 18,000 Indian lives were at stake.

      India also had reservations about Ukraine. Reports of Indian students facing racism in Ukraine have been doing the rounds on social media. These may be info ops by Russians, but they have touched a chord among the masses. Press reports of fleeing Indian students facing racism and segregation at the Ukrainian border have not helped, nor have memories of Ukrainian arms deals with Pakistan, which have triggered Indian suspicions. Even though India is against the conflict, New Delhi does not want to forsake an old friend and support a potentially hostile power.

      India also suspects the motives of the West in taking on Putin. There is a strong feeling across nearly all political parties that the US would not show the same concern for a non-white nation in Asia or Africa. Left-leaning parties point out that the US and the UK based their 2003 invasion of Iraq on a pack of lies. A popular Indian television anchor has railed against the “racist reportage” of Western media that treats blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian refugees differently to Syrian or Afghan ones.

      There is also another matter driving India’s hesitation to go along completely with the US in targeting Russia. An increasing trust deficit between the Democrats and the BJP is harming US–India relations. For years, The New York Times and The Washington Post have relentlessly criticized the BJP, accusing the party of being authoritarian, if not fascist. Even food aid to the impoverished citizens in Taliban-led Afghanistan did not get any recognition from the papers of record in New York and Washington.

      Billionaires like George Soros who support Democrats have been vocal against the BJP and Modi. Their foundations have also funded Indian organizations opposed to the BJP. Americans see this funding as an expression of idealism that seeks to promote civil society and democracy. On the other hand, many Indians see American funding as a sinister ploy to weaken the nationalist BJP and replace them with weak, pliant leaders. Indians are also irked by the fact that Democrats rarely give credit to the BJP for winning elections, the democratic proof of its platform’s popularity.

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      Democrats have also been pressuring India to legalize gay marriage, forgetting that the issue is pending before the Indian Supreme Court. Indians point out that it was the British who decreed “unnatural” sexual acts” as not just illegal but also imprisonable during Queen Victoria’s heyday. The BJP has already come out in favor of legalizing homosexuality but has no power to intervene in a matter pending before the court. The failure of Democrats to recognize this reeks of a white savior complex that destroys trust between Washington and New Delhi. 

      Many BJP leaders are convinced that the Democrats are plotting some sort of a regime change in the 2024 elections. They believe there is an elaborate game plan in place to discredit Modi and the BJP. In this worldview, the Democrat establishment is manipulating discourse and peddling narratives that could lead to some version of the Orange Revolution in India. They are convinced that once Putin goes, Modi might be next. Even though India is opposed to a war that is severely hurting its economy, this fear of Western interference in domestic political matters is one more reason for India to abstain from turning on its old friend Russia.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More