By Deepak Parvatiyar*
India Signals Autonomy while Balancing Moscow and the US
India–US Talks Push Sanctions on Pakistan-Based Terror Groups
New Delhi: Foreign policy rarely announces itself with fanfare. It reveals its intentions through timing, sequencing and, sometimes, silence. India’s diplomatic calendar this week demonstrated that fluently. Even as Russian President Vladimir Putin held a highly publicised visit to New Delhi — complete with defence negotiators, oil executives and discussions on long-term economic partnerships — the Indian and American national security establishments ran high-intensity parallel engagements of their own. When two great-power axes intersect in the same capital in the same week, coincidence becomes the least persuasive explanation.
The crescendo was the Joint Statement of the 21st Meeting of the India–United States Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism and the Designations Dialogue, released on December 6, 2025, documenting the December 3, 2025, meetings between the two sides in New Delhi.
It was not the fact of the meeting that drew attention, because India and the United States have maintained a structured counterterrorism partnership for years. What turned heads was the tone: unusually direct, explicit in attribution, and impatient with ambiguity. The statement condemned terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations,” but unlike more cautious diplomatic texts of the past, it explicitly referred to Pakistan-based militant networks, including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and called for expanded United Nations 1267 sanctions regime designations not only against organisations but also proxy groups, financiers and logistical backers.
Red Fort and Pahalgam Attacks Drive US–India Sanctions
The sharpness of the language becomes clearer when placed in the context of the two attacks referenced in the document. On April 22, 2025, a group of armed militants ambushed a security convoy in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, killing four security personnel and injuring six others. Investigators later recovered encrypted communication devices and drone-modified explosives, indicating cross-border reconnaissance support. Intelligence officials privately assessed that The Resistance Front (TRF) — widely recognised as a shadow arm of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba — had operational fingerprints across planning, logistics and digital coordination.
The second attack, on November 10, 2025, near the Red Fort in Delhi, carried a different signature — two improvised explosive devices placed in a crowded area during a cultural event. Three civilians died and 17 sustained injuries. But its strategic weight was greater than its casualty count because it pierced the symbolic heart of the national capital. Preliminary forensic analysis linked components to a supply chain consistent with Pakistan-based networks, with money traced via a mix of cryptocurrency layering and hawala channels. The joint statement’s insistence on accountability for “terrorist attacks in Pahalgam and near the Red Fort” was therefore not rhetorical but grounded in ongoing investigations still tracking movement of funds, encrypted messages, drone-based surveillance inputs and recruitment pipelines.
The statement’s operational layer was equally notable. It committed both governments to expanded cybersecurity cooperation, greater intelligence fusion through bilateral and multilateral frameworks, deeper use of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) for prosecutions, and joint training modules for law-enforcement agencies. Crucially, it recognised the growing adaptation of artificial intelligence and unmanned aerial systems in terrorist operations — a theme that has escalated since at least 2022 in the Indian security ecosystem. Officials involved in the dialogue later indicated that data exchange on terror financing typologies, drone interdiction and cyber forensics will move from episodic to continuous sharing.
This did not emerge in a vacuum. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has been tightening scrutiny on terrorist financing networks across several jurisdictions with renewed aggression. There has been sustained U.S. diplomatic pressure for sanctions against groups that weaponise emerging technologies. And India’s domestic law-enforcement agencies — including the National Investigation Agency and the Intelligence Bureau — have been seeking faster turnaround times from American authorities on encrypted communication requests and digital footprint tracing. Seen through that lens, the statement indicates not a routine review but an upgrade — from transactional cooperation to alignment of strategic outcome preferences, especially on sanctions and designations.
Delhi Hosts Putin as India Tightens US Counterterror Ties
All of this would have been significant on its own. But what elevated the geopolitical stakes was when this text surfaced. It was released during the same week that Vladimir Putin was in India, meeting India’s top leadership to reinforce traditional strategic ties. Russia is still India’s largest defence supplier by cumulative stock, and much of India’s air defence and armoured fleet still depends on Russian systems and spare parts. Energy cooperation remains enormous: Russian crude now constitutes one of the largest components of India’s oil imports, and Indian refiners have built highly profitable supply chains that re-export petroleum products to global markets. Discussions during Putin’s visit included technology transfer for nuclear power, long-term payment settlement mechanisms to bypass sanctions, and ongoing support for space and submarine programmes.
For decades, such a high-profile Russian visit might have overshadowed American engagement in New Delhi. What happened instead was the opposite: India did not modulate its U.S. engagements for Russian comfort, and did not pause Russian diplomacy for American reassurance. That is not a miscalculation — that is strategy. It communicated three simultaneous truths: Washington does not have veto power over India’s Moscow channel; Moscow does not have veto power over India’s Washington channel; and India will not perform loyalty tests for either.
Those reading the geopolitical subtext detected a deeper message. The United States considers India indispensable to the Indo-Pacific architecture designed to counterbalance China’s rise. Russia considers India indispensable to sustaining its economy under sanctions. In this environment, India has leverage over both, which neither wants to destabilise. By refusing to slow cooperation with Washington during Putin’s visit, New Delhi reinforced that its foreign policy is not hierarchical. The era of “if with Russia, then not with the U.S.” — or vice-versa — is gone. India now practices multi-alignment as strategic capital, not as a defensive manoeuvre.
India Signals Autonomy While Balancing Moscow and Washington
This diplomatic choreography also plays into the domestic narrative. Public sentiment in India today rewards autonomy on the global stage. Visible proximity to both Washington and Moscow allows the government to project independence without isolation, and global engagement without ideological dependency. That posture reinforces national pride and political support without requiring hard rhetorical choices.
The looming question is whether this model remains sustainable if either Washington or Moscow eventually demands alignment as the price of continued cooperation. But for now, neither can afford that risk. Russia needs Indian markets too urgently to test red lines. The United States needs India too centrally in its China strategy to jeopardise the partnership. India — perhaps for the first time since Independence — is courted by both poles of a divided world on terms set in New Delhi.
The underlying message encoded in this week’s diplomatic signalling, therefore, is not subtle: India will continue engaging with Russia on defence and energy even as it deepens counterterrorism, technology and strategic partnerships with the United States. It will not compartmentalise great-power relations according to external expectations. It will not pause one axis to accommodate the sensitivities of another. And it will use timing, sometimes more than words, to make that clear.
In a world increasingly shaped by strategic coercion, India has chosen a different vocabulary: leverage through multiplicity. Engagement is not about alignment but about negotiation. A foreign policy in which every partnership is utilitarian, transactional when needed, and sovereign at all times. This is not a tightrope. It is a tight script — and India is the one writing it.
*Senior Journalist
