New Delhi, July 22: Russia is prodding India to invest in infrastructure projects in Crimea two years after Moscow annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine, posing a tricky friendship test for New Delhi at a time its foreign office is plotting a thaw with Kiev.
Moscow has proposed setting up a Russia-India Investment Centre in Sevastopol to oversee the Indian investments in the Crimean port city that is also a base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet, senior officials here have said.
The pitch from Russia has left the Indian foreign office in a quandary because accepting the proposal will mean a public declaration of New Delhi's recognition of Moscow's annexation, which most of the world holds illegal.
India has so far quietly backed Russia over the sanctions it has faced from the European Union and the US in response to the annexation, without publicly justifying the takeover barring one comment in 2014 by then national security adviser Shivshankar Menon.
But rejecting the Russian proposal outright will not prove easy either, officials said, since it comes at a time India is embarking on a thaw with Ukraine that is in any case expected to test New Delhi's relations with all-weather friend Moscow.
President Pranab Mukherjee has agreed to visit Kiev and Ukraine's foreign minister is expected to visit India later this year, ending a three-year pause in diplomatic ties that New Delhi enforced in deference to Moscow. India and Ukraine have not held formal diplomatic talks since 2013, when Russia-backed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's rule first came under threat.
Yanukovich's successor Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been locked in a diplomatic spat since Moscow annexation of Crimea in early 2014.
"We have had a long pause in diplomatic and political exchanges at every level," Igor Polikha, Ukraine's ambassador to India, had told The Telegraph in a recent interview. "I am most hopeful that as an outcome of our foreign minister's visit, we will be able to take concrete steps towards resuming contacts at the highest level."
Russia has for the past several years worried about India's growing proximity to the US. Those concerns have escalated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's repeated visits to Washington and the deepening military relationship between India and Russia.
India has tried to assuage Russian worries by arguing that its growing ties with the US do not in any way impinge on the New Delhi-Moscow relationship. In meetings with Russian leaders, Indian officials have emphasised their tacit support for Moscow over the Ukraine crisis as an example. It's a message Modi too tried to send during a rare television interview last month.
"The amount of respect with which I speak to America, I speak to Russia with the same amount of respect," Modi said in the interview.
But the thaw with Ukraine, while important for the renewal of a stagnant relationship with Kiev, risks upsetting the fine balance India has tried to strike between Russia and its western rivals led by the US.
Investing in a Russia-controlled Crimea could serve as a reassurance to Moscow, officials said, but it could render the attempt to revive the relationship with Ukraine a non-starter.
For Russia, international recognition of its hold on Crimea is a key diplomatic goal, and Moscow has repeatedly indicated it eyes India as a prime candidate among major nations to start a trend.
In December 2014, when Putin visited India for the annual bilateral summit between leaders of the two countries, he brought with him in his plane Sergey Aksyanov, a pro-Russia Crimean leader who Ukraine calls a terrorist and blames for the region's secession. Aksyanov was appointed Prime Minister of Crimea by Putin.
Ukraine and the US had protested Aksyanov's visit to India, and asked New Delhi if he was a part of Putin's official delegation. New Delhi clarified that Aksyanov was not a part of bilateral talks - but the Crimean leader met a series of Indian business leaders during his visit.
