The war in Ukraine has not only shattered Europe’s post-Cold War safety order but besides accelerated a profound reordering in the politics of the Global South. As western states rallied around Kyiv with sanctions and military aid, Moscow turned eastward, deepening ties with Beijing, courting Gulf capitals, and selling discounted oil to willing buyers specified as India. China, in particular, has positioned itself as a pro-Russia broker in global forums, subtly framing the conflict as part of a broader competition over the rules of the global order.
This realignment has, in effect, united a loose but consequential non-western axis, an evolving constellation of states unwilling to be drawn into a purely values-versus-interests binary. Instead, they are intent on maximizing their own strategical autonomy. For India, this shifting terrain offers both risks and opportunities. Its Russia relation remains a strategical constant, even as Delhi cultivates ties with the US and Europe. In the mediate East, meanwhile, Riyadh’s increasing independency from Washington and its willingness to engage with Moscow on energy policy open the door to fresh partnerships.
Against this backdrop – and with India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar set to visit Moscow on August 21st while Washington flirts with Islamabad – Delhi has multiple incentives to research fresh frameworks for cooperation. The mediate East, already facing a leadership void in regional diplomacy, offers fertile ground for specified an experiment. This article examines how a Russia-Saudi-India trilateral could emerge, not as an anti-western bloc, but as a pragmatic alignment suited to the multipolar realities of the 21st century.
From bilateral familiarity to trilateral anticipation
The thought of a Saudi-Russia-India trilateral may seem ambitious, but its foundations are being laid in robust bilateral ties. India-Saudi Arabia relations have surged in fresh years, with trade topping 33 billion US dollars and the Kingdom supplying nearly 18 per cent of India’s crude oil. The partnership now extends into petrochemicals, fertilizers and renewables. Riyadh’s “Vision 2030” improvement agenda and India’s “Make in India” initiative present a natural complement between a youthful democracy and a modernizing monarchy. The first-ever India-GCC summit in 2024 marked a diplomatic milestone.
India–Russia ties, while more transactional present than during the Cold War, stay strategically significant. Trade has surged to over 68 billion US dollars in 2024–25, fuelled by discounted Russian oil and fertilizers. Defence cooperation endures through projects specified as the S-400 air defence strategy and the BrahMos rocket venture. Crucially, India’s nuanced stance on the Ukraine war – refusing to condemn Moscow outright while calling for peace – has preserved access to both markets in the West and energy corridors to the East.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Russia have developed amazing synergy via the OPEC+ framework since 2016, coordinating oil production to stabilize markets despite their divergent political systems. Riyadh’s cautious overtures toward BRICS and Moscow’s eastward pivot signal a willingness to disrupt conventional alignments. Together, these bilateral threads make the conditions for trilateral engagement.
At the heart of this possible axis lies the issue of energy. India’s surging energy demand, Saudi Arabia’s sheer amount of production, and Russia’s reserves and method expertise form a powerful triad. A trilateral energy corridor could combine upstream Saudi production, Russian logistics, and Indian refining into joint ventures little susceptible to western-controlled pricing mechanisms. This “Saudi capital, Russian know-how, Indian markets” model could underpin cooperation in petrochemical hubs, ammonia and fertilizer plants, and even green hydrogen projects.
With the Ukraine war disrupting established supply chains and prompting western sanctions, specified arrangements could offer all 3 states greater insulation from geopolitical shocks. Yet energy trade is besides the most susceptible to the direct wrath of Washington. US president Donald Trump imposed 25 per cent tariffs plus a punishment on imports from India with effect from August 1st 2025, citing the country’s purchases of energy and military equipment from Russia (along with India’s advanced tariffs and non-monetary barriers to trade). specified measures underscore that energy cooperation may not be the perfect starting point for a trilateral, given its vulnerability to punitive action from the US.
By contrast, infrastructure, connectivity and multilateral diplomacy are comparatively little controversial avenues of cooperation. The global North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the Chennai–Vladivostok Maritime Corridor link India and Russia through Eurasia. Saudi participation via investment and political support could transform these into viable arteries for Eurasian trade, bypassing chokepoints controlled by western-led initiatives. Unlike direct energy trade, specified projects are little likely to trigger sanctions or punitive tariffs, as they fall into broader improvement and logistical frameworks. They besides let each organization to contribute distinct capabilities – Saudi financing, Russian logistical networks, and Indian port infrastructure – without overtly challenging western safety or economical regimes.
Multilaterally, all 3 nations share scepticism toward a US-led order increasingly cast in moral terms. Russia champions multipolarity through BRICS; India advocates for a “rules-based” but inclusive order; and Saudi Arabia flirts with non-US dollar oil settlements. The Ukraine war has heightened these impulses, exposing for many in the Global South what they perceive as western selectivity in applying norms of sovereignty and intervention.
Soft power, too, is an underexplored frontier. India, with its democratic ethos, cultural outreach, and leadership in the Global South, can frame the partnership as 1 of common benefit alternatively than bloc politics. For Russia, long depicted in western discourse as a revisionist power, association with India’s balanced diplomacy and developmental initiatives offers reputational gains. Riyadh’s Mohammad Bin Salman is eager to task a modern, diversified national image beyond oil. His imagination could find value in partnering with India’s technology sector and cultural industries. Under the ambit of imagination 2030, Riyadh is investing substantially in human capital development, while Moscow continues to keep a robust academic and technological tradition.
In areas of their respective strengths, Indian, Russian and Saudi institutions can initiate joint academic and investigation programmes, student exchange initiatives, and joint tech incubators for youth entrepreneurship, conferences (online/offline), podcasts and joint publications – domains traditionally dominated by western institutions. This should deliberately affect collaborative mechanisms between private universities, regional think tanks, and provincial cultural bodies, ensuring outreach beyond national capitals and elite institutions.
Trilateral cultural festivals rotating among the 3 countries, co-produced documentaries on shared historical ties, and halal and heritage tourism circuits must besides be promoted. In effect, soft power here is little about exporting ideology and more about humanizing a partnership that might otherwise be seen as purely transactional. In a polarized world, specified optics can be as crucial as trade flows or oil barrels in sustaining long-term cooperation. specified initiatives would not only deepen societal familiarity but besides offer a safe, non-contentious, and logical platform to build bridges in an otherwise geopolitically charged environment.
The American origin and value-driven diplomacy
No discussion of this trilateral can sidestep Washington’s role. The US remains vital to both India and Saudi Arabia in the spheres of trade, safety and technology. Yet the Ukraine war has strained these relationships. Washington has sought to twist the arm of partner countries into reducing or abandoning their ties with Moscow. Even though it has mostly failed in India’s case, the diplomatic force – now compounded by the recently imposed 25 per cent tariffs and penalties – has been crucial and persistent. It besides underscores the limits of value-driven diplomacy erstwhile strategical interests diverge. For Saudi Arabia, Washington’s lectures on human rights sit uneasily alongside its own request for diversified safety partners.
Here lies a deeper question for Europe and the West: can value-based global politics coexist with a planet where many states see themselves as transactional actors in a multipolar arena? For India, the answer is pragmatic: parallel partnerships are not betrayals, but insurance policies against volatility in any single alliance.
War as the obstacle and the catalyst:
An institutionalized trilateral is improbable while the Ukraine conflict rages. The war has locked Russia into a sanctions government that limits its financial manoeuvrability and deepens its dependence on the Global South. It has besides hardened western attitudes toward any perceived enabling of Moscow’s war effort, complicating the diplomatic space for partners like India and Saudi Arabia.
Yet paradoxically, the same war has catalysed the search for alternate alignments. For India, it is simply a reminder that reliance on any 1 bloc, whether to the West or East, carries risks. For Saudi Arabia, it has validated its pivot toward multiple poles of power. And for Russia, outreach to the Global South is now a strategical necessity, not a luxury. In this sense, the Ukraine war is both the primary obstacle to and the driving force behind any Russia-Saudi-India convergence.
Conclusion
India’s abroad policy must stay nimble in a fractured world. As western alliances consolidate around Ukraine and fresh power centres appear elsewhere, Delhi must decide not simply who to partner with, but what principles, if any, should underpin those partnerships. The language of value-driven diplomacy may resonate in European capitals, but in much of the Global South, interests stay the primary currency.
A Saudi-Russia-India trilateral may deficiency the ideological clarity of western alliances, but it offers strategical depth, economical resilience, and a measurement of autonomy from the large power rivalries now hardening across Eurasia. With India set to host the next edition of the yearly India–Russia Summit later this year – paving the way for president Vladimir Putin’s first visit to the country since 2021, Delhi has reason to look beyond the familiar. The war in Ukraine may have closed any doors, but it has besides opened a window for India to quietly aid form a non-western order – 1 that reflects the planet as it is becoming, not as it erstwhile was.
Dr. Divya Malhotra is simply a elder fellow (visiting) with Centre for National safety Studies, Bangalore. She has been associated with India’s National safety Council’s Advisory Board and mediate East Institute fresh Delhi as a researcher.
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