On what appears to be a routine diplomatic itinerary, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will arrive in Moscow on Sunday to attend a two-day visit. He will be accompanied by Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov to co-chair the 27th session of the Inter Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation with Russia, and meet with his counterpart Sergey Lavrov separately. The entire plan doesn't sound like any big deal. But the timing has an obvious explanation: as much as it has to do with Washington and Beijing as it does with Moscow.

This marks Jaishankar's second visit to Moscow within a year, and follows just six months after India and Washington reached a tariff truce, which reduced punitive duties on Indian goods from a punitive 50 percent to 18 percent, while the latter made a quiet promise to stop buying Russian crude at a discount. As far as trade data now trickling from the recently-closed fiscal year, that understanding has been honored more in the spirit than the letter. While New Delhi upheld its end of the deal with Washington on paper, India's overall trade with Russia reached a new high of $68.69 billion in 2025-26, with energy being the main driver for India's trade with Russia, followed by fertiliser and coal. This mismatch in the official Indian and Russian customs numbers is now a well-known trade fact.

The commission that Jaishankar chairs this weekend was not set up to dominate geopolitics, it's meant to smoothen the processes of trade flow, from payment settlement to the logistical choke points. However, it came right after India closed its fiscal year at a record trade level and despite it, New Delhi is not slowing the relationship down as consulates are being fast-tracked in Kazan and Yekaterinburg to serve that trade. The plumbing is actually being enlarged, if anything. Indian demand for Russian barrels is no fluke of war; Rosneft is investing over $25 billion in Indian refining and retail infrastructure. The two governments have agreed to put a formal figure on bilateral trade of $100 billion by 2030, which the PM has stated that he can achieve before the deadline.

The arithmetics make the numbers look weird in the end because there is a lack of balance underneath them. Remove energy and the trade turnover is reduced to about $12 billion, which is a rounding error for two economies of this size. India exports medicine, machine and chemicals to Russia and Russia exports crude, fertiliser and coal to India in bulk quantities, which are much more than what India exports to it. The outcome is a trade imbalance in excess of $58 billion and the growing use of special vostro accounts in rupees and roubles that the Reserve Bank of India has made more convenient to use. It's a "workaround" in response to sanctions and has been working out much better than western policy makers anticipated when the mechanism was first “invented.

All this is riding on the Ukrainian conflict, which refuses to come to an end. From the summit in Alaska to shuttle diplomacy from Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, successive rounds of talks have resulted in positive comments about being "very close" to a settlement, but no signatories. The issue of the Donbas still hangs in the balance, while Moscow has made no effort to soften its stance in the wake of its oil being snapped up by India and China despite the sanctions regime. The reality belies at least partially the entire argument of the tariff pressure that Washington applied on India last year. The trade data from New Delhi indicate the squeeze has been applied loosely if the objective was to weaken the Russian war chest by starving its primary customer, the one with the highest spending power following the sanctions.

For India, none of this is actually a contradiction, but rather a carefully calibrated approach, with strategic autonomy as a way of working rather than a slogan. In the year since, New Delhi has been on the move between the blocs it's willing to join, sitting in the Quad with Washington, Tokyo, Canberra and attending summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, regarded by Moscow as a counterweight to the Quad. It purchases Russian oil at a reduced price and it is negotiating a deal that requires it to purchase more American energy. It speaks to Lavrov about the need to revive a Ukraine dialogue that India has never been a part of, and to Rubio about an Indo-Pacific agenda Russia is somewhat suspicious of. There is a remarkable consistency to this stance that Jaishankar has promoted himself, the fact that a 60 year partnership with Moscow is not a burden which needs to be shed for the comfort of Washington, irrespective of the stance of successive American administrations on Russian oil.

In the end, the economics of the visit are simple, although the politics are not. India has been importing crude oil from Russia at prices that have saved billions of dollars since 2022 on its energy import bill as well as reflected in inflation data and current account. If it is lost, even to some extent, it would reverberate in the price of fuel when India cannot afford it. Earlier this year, Washington's tariff retreat was a tacit admission that this was true, and it has been seeking supply alternatives from other sources, including a reference to other barrels coming from Venezuela, which have not yet significantly altered supply patterns.

What Jaishankar brings to Moscow this weekend, then, is not so much a message as a service agreement on a relationship India has chosen not to decide between. The commission sessions, the consulate approvals, the currency workarounds, all of it is a signal of a parallel partnership India wants to continue with in addition to its American and European dealings, not in their absence. Now every capital that will watch this visit will be wondering, will that balancing act hold up in the next turn of the Ukraine war or the next change in Washington's tariff policy?