India makes this clear to Russia that it will stall cooperation with them for the development of its civil Nuclear programme if it is unable to become a full member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in the future. Russia sounds little worried and is thinking that India might be delaying the MoU to get Moscow to work more proactively for its NSG membership.

In the meeting last week, the Russia’s deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin took up the issue with PM Narendra Modi. Rogozin, has left the country without getting any kind of assurance from India on signing the MoU. The meeting was held for Modi’s summit with the President Vladimir Putin. Russia is known to be India’s oldest and most reliable partner when it comes to the development of its nuclear energy programme.




In the last NSG meeting, India’s message to Russia which was conveyed by Moscow via Official channels, that without NSG membership in the next 1-2 years, Indian will be going for an indigenous nuclear energy programme. The government sees that Russia which has enough influence with the Beijing to soften its position on the issue of India’s NSG membership.

Moscow is concerned that India is not responding to its request for signing the MoU even weeks ahead of the Modi Putin summit. It sees nuclear energy cooperation as one of the most significant elements of its bilateral relationship with India. India has at several levels in the past asked Russia to persuade Beijing which continues to back a criteria based and not a merit based approach as desired by India, for expansion of the global body which controls nuclear commerce.

Russia has worked hard to secure support for India’s membership, the capital believes that it has not done enough to convince China which sees Moscow as a key partner in dealing with the emerging international situation. The Russians believe that India has complicated the case by inviting Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh which will only see China hardening its position.




Russia’s interests now converge sharply with China’s as evident also from the way it has endorsed Beijing’s ambitious OBOR project. Putin himself attended the OBOR conference this week, which India chose to ignore. Russia, like several Indian neighbours, maintains that its endorsement of OBOR has nothing to do with the contentious CPEC which raises sovereignty issues for India. Moscow’s strategic embrace of Pakistan, made manifest in its first joint military exercise with the latter last year has also spooked India.
India might shun foreign collaboration in nuclear energy is also interesting. The government only recently reiterated in Parliament that it expects to raise nuclear power generation capacity to 15,000 MW by 2024 from the 4780 MW that it was in 2014.