John Helmer writes that Indian elites are angry that Russia has opted to keep a distance from the recent Indo-Pakistani clash and has offered mediation in place of support.

However Russia and India are not treaty allies and never have been. Helmer writes India is "one of Russia’s largest and longest-serving allies" but it's not 1985 anymore.

The nationalist Modi is a welcome guest in Russia, but the foreign policy platform he campaigned on was to set aside the multipolar, non-aligned strategy of the socialists, and to seek US alignment vs China. The same US which happens to be the most powerful country on the globe, lists Russia as its enemy number one, and is waging financial, economic, moral, diplomatic and propaganda war on Moscow.

Pakistan meanwhile, once a key junior ally of the US, is now involved in a major spat with Washington and is not far from being declared a rogue state by Trump for its aid to the Afghan insurgency. Recently Russia held the first military exercise with Pakistan and made the first military transport helicopter sale to the country which in the 1980s fueled the Afghan war against the Soviets.

Sure India and the Soviet Union were good and sincere friends, but if India thinks its China concerns justify Delhi moving closer to Washington and leaving Russia behind, then that is something that works both ways.

The American threat to Russia is if anything much more real than any Chinese threat to India (the conflict there is largely over pride), and Moscow can't justify one-sided relationships where it keeps backing Delhi even as the latter keeps its options open, or is actively courting Russia's powerful enemy.