New Delhi, India – Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting India starting Thursday for the first time since Moscow’s war on Ukraine broke out more than four years ago, even as a renewed push by the United States to end the conflict appears to have stalled.

Putin’s 30-hour speed trip also coincides with a tense turn in relations between Washington and New Delhi, with the US also punishing India with tariffs and a sanctions threat for its strong historic ties with Russia and a surge in its purchase of Russian crude during the Ukraine war.

That tension has, in turn, made India’s longstanding balancing act between Russia and the West an even more delicate tightrope walk.

Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, India has tried to avoid getting locked into formal alliances with any superpower, leading the non-aligned movement during the Cold War, even though in reality it drifted closer to the Soviet Union from the 1960s. Since the end of the Cold War, it has deepened strategic and military ties with the US while trying to keep its friendship with Russia afloat.

Yet, Russia’s war on Ukraine has challenged that balance – and Putin’s visit could offer signs of how Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to juggle New Delhi’s competing relationships without sacrificing any of them.

What’s scheduled for Putin?

Putin is expected to land on Thursday evening and head for a private dinner with Modi at the prime minister’s residence in the heart of the Indian capital, New Delhi.

On the morning of Friday, December 5, Putin is scheduled to visit Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, for a guard of honour and a meeting with India’s ceremonial head of state, Droupadi Murmu. He will then, like all visiting leaders, travel to Raj Ghat, the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi.

Then, Putin and Modi will meet at Hyderabad House, a complex that hosts most leadership summits for the latest chapter of an annual India-Russia summit. After that, they are scheduled to meet business leaders, before attending a banquet thrown in Putin’s honour by Murmu, the Indian president.

Earlier, the Kremlin said in a statement that Putin’s visit to India was “of great importance, providing an opportunity to comprehensively discuss the extensive agenda of Russian-Indian relations as a particularly privileged strategic partnership”.

Putin will be joined by Andrei Belousov, his defence minister, and a wide-ranging delegation from business and industry, including top executives of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, and reportedly the heads of sanctioned oil firms Rosneft and Gazprom Neft.

Why is the timing of the visit significant?

The visit comes as India and Russia mark 25 years of a strategic partnership that began in Putin’s first year in office as his country’s head of state.

But even though India and Russia like to portray their relationship as an example of a friendship that has remained steady amid shifting geopolitical currents, their ties haven’t been immune to pressures from other nations.

Since 2000, New Delhi and Moscow have had in place a system of annual summits: The Indian prime minister would visit Russia one year, and the Russian president would pay a return visit to India the following year.

That tradition, however, was broken in 2022, the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Modi was supposed to visit Russia for the summit, but the conclave was put off.

In 2023, Putin skipped a visit to India for the G20 summit in New Delhi. At the time, Putin was rarely travelling abroad, largely because of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against him related to the Ukraine war. India is not a member of the ICC – and so it would have been safe for Putin to attend, but Western members of the G20 made it clear that their leaders would be uncomfortable sharing the room with the Russian president.

Finally, in 2024, the annual summit resumed, with Modi visiting Russia. And now, Putin will land in New Delhi after four years.

What’s on the agenda?

Trade analysts and political experts expect Putin to push for India to buy more Russian missile systems and fighter jets, in a bid to boost defence ties and explore more areas to expand trade, including pharmaceuticals, machinery and agricultural products.

The summit “offers an opportunity for both sides to reaffirm their special relationship amidst intense pressure on India from [US] President [Donald] Trump with punitive tariffs,” Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst for India at Crisis Group, a US-based think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Putin, analysts said, will be seeking optical dividends from the summit.

“President Putin can send a very strong message to his own people, and also to the international community, that Russia is not isolated in the world,” said Rajan Kumar, a professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“Russia is being welcomed by a democracy when Putin faces pressure for the war in Ukraine,” Kumar told Al Jazeera.

But visuals aside, a key driver of the India-Russia relationship – oil trade – is now at risk. And that, along with the shadow of the man responsible for the disruption, will be hovering over talks, said experts.

Is Trump an overshadowing factor in the summit?

India became the second-largest buyer of Russian crude after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022 – an increase of a staggering 2,250 percent in imports, as Russia’s share in its imports went from 1 percent to 40 percent.

The US at the time quietly encouraged India to buy more Russian oil, New Delhi says. The West was stopping purchases of Russian crude, and a complete global ban on that oil would have shrunk global supplies, raising prices. India, by increasing its uptake of Russian oil, helped stabilise the global market.

But as Trump, in his second term, has looked for levers to use to pressure Moscow and Kyiv to end the war, he has targeted India for buying Russian oil. After initially imposing 25 percent tariffs on Indian goods, Trump doubled that to 50 percent as a penalty for Russian crude purchases.

For months after that, India continued importing Russian oil and defended what it called its “strategic autonomy”.

However, in October, Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil firms – Rosneft and Lukoil – and threatened sanctions against firms of other countries that trade with them.

Reliance, India’s largest private oil refiner – and the biggest buyer of Russian oil in India – has since said that it will no longer export petroleum products that use Russian crude.

Indian imports of Russian crude are expected to fall to a three-year low now. Meanwhile, India recently signed a deal to dramatically ramp up its import of gas from the US.

In the defence sector too, the US has been pressuring India to buy more from it and less from Russia.

“New Delhi is wary of upsetting Washington regarding its defence deals with Moscow, but that’s not going to deter it from making important deals,” said Donthi, the analyst at Crisis Group. “India hopes to blunt US criticism by making similar deals with it, some of which are already under way.”

But Trump’s pressure risks hurting goodwill for the US in India.

Kanwal Sibal, former Indian foreign secretary and an ex-ambassador to Russia, said Trump and the US were employing “double standards”.

“Trump can roll out a red carpet for Putin in Alaska. Why should India not build on its ties with Russia then?” he added, referring to the Trump-Putin summit in August.

In which sector are India-Russia ties strong?

While the bilateral energy ties between India and Russia face several barriers, their defence ties are steadier.

Russia remains India’s largest defence supplier, accounting for roughly 36 percent of arms imports, and more than 60 percent of India’s existing arsenal.

Import numbers have come down from 72 percent in 2010, as India attempts to boost domestic production and also buy more from the US and European nations. But experts say that Russia’s position as India’s pre-eminent defence partner will likely remain unchallenged for several years.

The Russian S-400 missile defence system was central to India’s air defences during its four-day air war with Pakistan in May. India’s air force chief, Marshal AP Singh, said that “the S-400 was a game changer” for India.

New Delhi is now looking to buy additional S-400 air defence systems. Russia, meanwhile, wants to also sell India its Su-57 fifth-generation stealth fighter jets. “The SU-57 is the best plane in the world,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, ahead of the summit. “And it will be on the agenda.”

What are India-Russia trade prospects?

India-Russia trade has undergone a major shift since 2022, ballooning from a modest $10bn to a record nearly $69bn this year, primarily fuelled by New Delhi’s appetite for discounted Russian crude oil.

However, these numbers remain lopsided: Indian exports, largely pharmaceuticals and machinery, stand at roughly $5bn, resulting in a widening $64bn trade deficit. And Russia’s exports to India have been dominated by oil over the past three years. With trade now expected to fall, so will overall numbers, caution experts. The India-Russia goal of reaching $100bn in trade by 2030 appears distant.

Instead, analysts told Al Jazeera, the two countries now appear to be betting on labour migration as a driver of people-to-people and economic ties.

According to the estimates of the Russian Ministry of Labour, by 2030, the country is expected to see a shortfall of 3.1 million workers. Indian workers could fill that gap.

“Russia is opening up its labour market for India and looking to change its traditional supplier of labour from Central Asian countries to India,” said Kumar, the professor of international studies. “This kind of migration can have a positive impact on India-Russia relations.”

That won’t change the fundamental tension that undergirds India’s ties with Russia: New Delhi’s keenness to not damage relations with the US in the process.

As India simultaneously negotiates trade deals with the US, the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, an economic bloc led by Russia at the moment, New Delhi is walking a fine line “where it risks antagonising either of them, who are all important economic trade partners,” said Kumar.

The one thing that could help: a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, say analysts.