Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 2025 India visit, which took place amid a complex and evolving global geostrategic and geoeconomic matrix, clearly demonstrated that this is the partnership of the future, which will play a decisive role in shaping the new world order. Putin’s visit comes at a time when the early tremors of the tectonic shifts in global geopolitics can be distinctly felt.

US President Donald Trump’s 29-point peace formula for Ukraine clearly reflects the waning power and leverage of Europe and the reluctant, tacit acceptance of the emerging reality that peace must be on terms acceptable to Moscow. Additionally, when read in conjunction with the US NSS document, it reflects the US’s fatigue and declining interest in European security, and a major dent in the transatlantic security architecture. Further, tensions in the South China Sea, South Asia, West Asia, Latin America, and South Caucasus, strengthening of de-dollarisation trends and global tech rivalries give potent signals of the emerging shifts in world order.

Putin’s visit can be seen and analysed through three broad prisms: optics, deliverables, and long-term impact. In terms of optics, Modi’s warm embrace of Putin, going all the way to the tarmac, clearly shows that India refuses to give in to Western hegemony and sermonising. Ever since the Ukraine conflict started in 2022, India has faced immense pressure from the West to side with the West at the altar of its time-tested and historical friendship with Russia. The West has the hubristic tendency to define, measure, perceive, assess, and shape the world through a West-centric lens and on its own terms.

However, Modi’s steadfast refusal to abandon Moscow and support the West is purportedly driven by the fundamental belief that the Ukraine conflict is a European war, not a global issue. The world beyond Europe is neither ethically obliged nor geo-strategically bound to choose sides to cater to the interests or satisfy the ideological whims and fancies of either of the warring parties, and as........

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