The Room with a View

Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab

Kubinka/ Moscow: Overlooking the old building of the Russian ministry of defence, off the bank of river Moskva, Aoduvan is a quaint little restaurant inside an equally small, boutique hotel, which sprung from the farm the owners of the property run a few kilometres outside Moscow. In addition to growing herbs and vegetables, the farm also breeds poultry and game for food. On the menu then is food straight from the farm. Off the menu is conversation about Russia’s present position in the world and its future.

At the ARMY 2018 International Military and Technical Forum in Moscow

Cutting into the breast of goose jerky liberally garnished with cranberry sauce, FORCE host for the afternoon, an independent Russian analyst, says, “Russia does not want to make hard choices. Actually, it cannot afford to make any harder choices. For some time now, we will continue to pay the price for the choices we made in the last few years.”

The new choices that he was talking about pertained to Russia balancing its relations with India and Pakistan; the old choices that he referred to were Russian actions, first in Ukraine and then in Syria. “Given that Russia does not have too many friends in the world right now, it would want to hold on to those it has,” he says. According to him, while neither Pakistan nor China ask Russia to make a choice, India tends to do that as its current foreign policy hinges on ‘who all doesn’t like Pakistan.’

Once upon a time, this could have been an easy call to take. Not anymore. Despite fervent assurances by the bosses of the Russian defence industry that India would always take precedence over Pakistan as far as defence sales are concerned, the truth is that today Russia’s relations with Pakistan are tied up with its relations with China and its growing outreach in the Middle East. Syria is just one part of it, in which Iran is its closest ally. The other, and the more important part is the regional alignment that Russia is assiduously building with China, in which it has allowed the latter to take the lead through Belt and Road Initiative. Of course, the Chinese yuan matters too.

Hence, Russia’s insistence on India