Looks like we have lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China: Trump

Posting a photograph of Modi, Putin and Xi walking together, Trump took to Truth Social and said, “Looks like we have lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”.

Asked about the US President’s post, Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, said, “No comment.”

India has maintained that Modi travelled to Tianjin – his first visit to China in seven years – to attend the SCO summit where he also held bilateral meetings with Xi and Putin.

Efforts to repair ties with China, which plummeted following Chinese incursions along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh in May 2020, began in October 2024 when Modi and Xi met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan. Meeting in Tianjin again, they took stock of the ties and decided to work towards normalisation of ties.

Modi and Putin also held talks in Tianjin, discussing the war in Ukraine and strengthening economic cooperation.

Although the Prime Minister’s visit to China had been scheduled earlier, photographs of Modi, Xi and Putin together invited global attention given that Trump had been targeting India for a month before the Tianjin gathering – On July 30, he announced the imposition of 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods, and followed it a week later by announcing an additional 25 per tariff over Indian purchase of Russian oil.

In the Tianjin images, many in the West see an anti-Western, anti-US grouping being formed. Within the US too, Trump’s moves against India have alarmed those who worked with previous administrations to build ties with Delhi, a partner to counter Beijing’s assertions in the Indo-Pacific region.

India has rejected the US charge of funding the Russian war machine, and says it has bought oil to cushion its citizens from the inflationary impact of rising energy prices, even stabilising the global energy supply. It has called the imposition of tariffs as “unjustified”, pointing out that China and Europe have also been buying energy from Russia without being penalised.

Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro accused India of being an “oil money laundromat for the Kremlin”. He also spoke of “strategic freeloading” by Delhi, saying it continues to buy Russian weapons while urging US defence firms to transfer sensitive military technologies and set up manufacturing plants in India.

“If India, the world’s largest democracy, wants to be treated like a strategic partner of the US, it needs to act like one,” Navarrp said.

Responding to Navarro’s remarks, the MEA spokesperson said, “We have seen the inaccurate and misleading statements made by Mr Navarro, and obviously reject them.”

In spite of the verbal onslaught, Delhi has maintained that negotiations for an Indo-US trade deal are underway. On Friday, Jaiswal said, “We continue to engage with the US side on trade issues.”

Yet the strain in ties has put a question mark on the Quad summit to be hosted by India this year. Leaders of the US, Japan and Australia, the countries in the grouping with India, were to attend the meeting.

Asked about the Quad summit, Jaiswal said, “The Quad is a valuable forum for discussion on shared interests in a number of areas. The Leaders’ Summit is scheduled through diplomatic consultations among the four partners.”

On the Ukraine conflict, India has engaged with Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Union leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa.

“As far as the conflict in Ukraine is concerned, we welcome all the recent efforts towards establishing peace in Ukraine. We hope that all parties will proceed ahead constructively. India supports an early end of the conflict and the establishment of an enduring peace,” Jaiswal said.