India’s World hosted a webinar on 19 January 2026 to mark the launch of Volume 2, Issue 1 of the magazine, The Moscow Connect: Russia Beyond the West. Bringing together Indian and Russian strategic thinkers, the discussion examined why Russia remains a structurally important partner for India and how New Delhi can navigate its ties with Moscow in an era of deepening Russia-China alignment, declining multilateralism, and intensifying great-power competition.
Amid accelerating geopolitical churn, India’s relationship with Russia stands at a critical juncture. The war in Ukraine, the deepening Russia-China partnership, and the erosion of post-Cold War global institutions have all intensified scrutiny of New Delhi’s long-standing ties with Moscow. As India’s World argues in its January 2026 issue, the central question is not whether India should move away from Russia, but how and why Russia continues to matter to India in a changing global order.
The webinar drew on the core arguments of the issue to explore why India’s engagement with Russia today is driven less by sentimentality and more by structural realities: geography, energy security, defence ties, and the imperatives of great-power politics. The conversation also addressed a key strategic concern — whether Russia’s growing proximity to China represents a permanent realignment or a contingent outcome shaped by external pressures, and what strategic space this creates for India.
By bringing together Indian and Russian strategic thinkers, the discussion moved beyond binaries of alignment and non-alignment, offering a nuanced examination of why Russia remains strategically important to India even as the global order shifts towards informal power arrangements and selective partnerships.
Watch the webinar below to explore the full discussion.
Speakers
Chair
Ambassador Pankaj Saran — Convenor, NatStrat; Member, National Security Advisory Board; Former Ambassador of India to Russia
Panellists
Prof. C. Raja Mohan — Chair, Editorial Advisory Board, India’s World
Fyodor Lukyanov — Chairman, Council on Foreign and Defence Policy; Editor-in-Chief, Russia in Global Affairs
Nandan Unnikrishnan — Distinguished Fellow and Head of Eurasian Studies, Observer Research Foundation
Dr. Vasily Kashin — Director, Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies; Research Fellow, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE University