Boris Yeltsin during his 1993 visit to India

New Delhi, April 25: When former Russian President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was laid to rest this afternoon in Moscow’s Novodeyviche cemetery, a sprinkling of former leaders from the Western world, including Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr and John Major, were in attendance. But the only Indian present was ambassador Kanwal Sibal.

Truth is, there was no love lost between Yeltsin and India. When he broke up the Soviet Union in end-1991 and became President of a new Russia, the special relationship between New Delhi and Moscow went into a tailspin.

So when Yeltsin died on Monday, the ministry of external affairs discussed sending a representative but did not take a decision. External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee appeared busy preparing for Parliament, which opens tomorrow, and foreign secretary Shiv Shanker Menon was not in town.

It helped that the present Russian leadership is itself divided over Yeltsin’s legacy. His chosen successor and current President, Vladimir Putin, has restored a semblance of strategic ties but in the new world order, even that is subject to New Delhi’s emerging partnership with America.

Menon is travelling to Washington on Monday to take forward the Indo-US nuclear talks.

As President, Yeltsin presided over the worst period in Indo-Russian relations in recent memory. When he visited Delhi in January 1993, the Treaty of Peace, Security & Friendship that had guided the bilateral relationship since the 1971 war with Pakistan, was amended to become, simply, the Treaty of Peace & Friendship.

It was clear Yeltsin and his foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev were not interested in India. The lure of the West was overwhelming and Russia, forever straddling the continents with one foot in Asia and the other in Europe, chose Europe.

Later in 1993, then US President Bill Clinton, furious that Yeltsin’s Russia had inherited a contract to help Isro with its space programme, put so much pressure that the space agency Glavkosmos unilaterally cancelled the contract on the cryogenic engine deal.

New Delhi was furious, but not for long.

Untold story

What happened afterwards is the stuff of fiction. Russian scientists, believing that Isro was a true friend and partner, began to secretly transfer technology.

Without Yeltsin’s knowledge, planeloads of space documents were secretly sent to India and Isro scientists quietly visited their counterparts in Glavkosmos.

Very few people know this story — among them Ronen Sen, the erstwhile Indian ambassador to Russia who is now posted in the US. Small wonder, say observers, that New Delhi didn’t think too long about not sending a senior dignitary to the funeral in Moscow.