What should normally have been a routine annual summit and bilateral between two friends had to become a big show of optics in quick hugs and another episode of limousine diplomacy — in an interesting choice of a “made in India” car — as the US was bound to have been watching Mr Putin in India with added interest

xWith India’s strategic trajectory swinging to a post-Trump 2.0 realignment, the visit of the Russian President Vladmir Putin assumed a larger-than-life dimension. Thanks to US tariffs and sanctions, it is a very old, time-tested friendship with Russia that India leans on now as its calculus of national interest points it squarely in this direction.

What should normally have been a routine annual summit and bilateral between two friends had to become a big show of optics in quic

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