After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, India’s refusal to explicitly condemn Russia caused friction with the EU. For example, in June 2022, during the Globsec forum in Slovakia, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems”. Four years later, at the Kultaranta Talks in Finland, Jaishankar criticised Europe’s perceived hypocrisy while responding to a question on India’s purchases of Russian oil.

However, beneath those rhetorical exchanges, the Russia-Ukraine War has enabled deeper ties between India and the EU by facilitating the rearmament of Europe, exposing Russia’s limitations in New Delhi as a security partner, and prompting Europeans to take the geopolitical challenges posed by China more seriously. Taken together, these three geopolitical developments illustrate that the Ukraine War has deepened the growing interconnectedness between European and Indo-Pacific security.