Putin’s enduring bond with India

KP Nayar

KP Nayar
Strategic Analyst

Vladimir Putin’s career has been punctuated by India connections ever since he resigned from the KGB in 1991 after a 16-year service with the Soviet Union’s foreign intelligence agency and entered public life in his home town of St Petersburg. But these connections are unlikely to be recalled anywhere among the millions of words that will be written about him worldwide this week as he completes 20 years in power as President or Prime Minister of Russia.

Putin’s decisive break with his mentor Boris Yeltsin, who was reduced from a hero in 1991 to a zero for the Russian people in less than 10 years, took place in an Indian setting. Putin had just returned from a visit to India in 2000, one of his earliest foreign trips after becoming President on December 31, 1999. His 49th birthday was only days away.

Yeltsin decided to make an occasion of it and carefully timed the release of Midnight Diaries, the third volume of his memoirs, to coincide with his successor's first birthday as President. So, he arranged an exclusive party in Moscow with 150 special guests for the twin events — the book release and the birthday of the man he erroneously thought would be his protégé forever.

Putin, however, chose to give the birthday party a miss and ignore the book release. He left Moscow on the eve of the twin events and went to St Petersburg. There he celebrated his birthday with an Indian dinner in the company of his family and close friends at ‘Tandoor’, which had been his favourite restaurant for many years. This was the first definite signal that Putin would break away from Yeltsin’s legacy.

A few steps away from the iconic city’s famed St Isaac’s Cathedral, ‘Tandoor’ still cherishes that occasion. On the main wall of its Indian-style dining room which has subtle touches of Russian décor, hangs a photo gifted to the restaurant by the President. It shows Putin receiving an honorary degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi during his state visit in 2000.

Putin’s earliest physical acquaintance with India was made in this restaurant which opened in 1994, the year Putin became First Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. His Soviet-style official title was ‘First Deputy Chairman of the St Petersburg City Government and Chairman of the City Committee for External Relations’.

Ajai Malhotra, then Press Counsellor at the Indian Embassy in Moscow, approached Putin and asked if he would judge a quiz competition on India organised by the embassy jointly with Sant Petersburg Skie Vedemosti, a local print media outlet, and a local television channel, SPB5. Malhotra was a diplomat of his — and Putin's — generation for whom Russians had special affection.

Malhotra had had his education in Moscow where his father was Military Attache at the Indian Embassy. By the time Malhotra arrived in Russia many years later as a diplomat, he already spoke the local language like a native and knew their culture and traditions well. Putin readily agreed to judge the quiz. It was one of those competitions, very popular during the Soviet era in both countries. The Soviet Union was no more, but such friendship rituals had survived the collapse of Communism. There were six questions on India with multiple-choice answers for readers and viewers of the local media outlets. The first prize was a one-week, all-expense-paid trip to India for the winner.

Some of the quiz questions would resonate with the current political and state dispensations in India even today: participants had to identify the border with Pakistan according to the Indian maps. Only one of several maps in the competition showed Kashmir as part of India. Another answer had to correctly name the first Asian country to build a nuclear reactor. India, of course.

Putin would go over to the Indian Consulate in St Petersburg and spend hours with Malhotra going through the entries, selecting a winner and finally giving away the prize. Most of their pow-wows at the consulate ended with dinner at the ‘Tandoor’, discussing India’s problems with Pakistan on Kashmir, New Delhi’s nuclear policy and a host of Indian issues. Putin was then only a city official and had little to do with Russian foreign policy.

But by the time he became Prime Minister in August 1999, Putin already knew more about India through his discussions with Indian diplomats in St Petersburg than some of his predecessors, according to his admission. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited St Petersburg in November 2001, Putin told the Prime Minister as much in the Kremlin. Vajpayee, who was a great raconteur, narrated the anecdote to me. I was part of his media delegation to Russia.

Shortly after Putin became PM, the Indian Navy faced a crisis. Officials at the Admiralty Shipyard in St Petersburg were dragging their feet on repairs to a naval vessel which had been sent there because it was built there and bought from the Soviet Union. No amount of persuasion worked because the nature of the Russian defence industry was changing: it was steadily embracing the free market and was less and less influenced by political expediency in state-to-state relations.

New Delhi finally sent a former Consul-General in St Petersburg to Moscow, where he got ready access to Putin because all the PM’s key aides were from the St Petersburg City Government. Putin saw to it that in 24 hours the Indian Navy got what it wanted from the shipyard, something it had been trying to get for months in vain.

There was a time when the media in this country would have regaled readers and viewers with such stories about India’s relations with Moscow. Alas, no more! Now it is Bill Clinton’s dinner visits to Bombay Club, an Indian restaurant in Washington, or Cherie Blair wearing a sari which hits the front page. It is a fascination for the West that has brought it about, without realising that as India stares at a diplomatic winter, Russia will be its all-weather friend. Along with France.

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