New Delhi, India – Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting India starting Thursday for the first time since Moscow’s war on Ukraine broke out more than four years ago, even as a renewed push by the United States to end the conflict appears to have stalled.

Putin’s 30-hour speed trip also coincides with a tense turn in relations between Washington and New Delhi, with the US also punishing India with tariffs and a sanctions threat for its strong historic ties with Russia and a surge in its purchase of Russian crude during the Ukraine war.

That tension has, in turn, made India’s longstanding balancing act between Russia and the West an even more delicate tightrope walk.

Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, India has tried to avoid getting locked into formal alliances with

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