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| Modi and Putin Talk Shipping Lanes on the Sidelines of the SCO |
Synopsis: Modi and Putin discussed Indian seafarer safety amid the Black Sea and West Asia conflicts at the SCO Summit in Bishkek, alongside talks on trade, defence, and energy. Modi confirmed Putin's upcoming visit to India for next month's BRICS Summit.
When Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin sat down together on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit this week, the cameras caught the usual handshake and the usual warm words. What came out of the room afterward, though, was less about optics and more about ships stuck between wars.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri briefed reporters on the meeting, the two leaders' first face-to-face since December, when Putin visited New Delhi for the annual India-Russia summit. This time the setting was the 26th SCO Summit, hosted in Bishkek, and the conversation ranged from defence and energy cooperation to a subject that rarely makes headlines outside shipping circles: what happens to sailors caught in the crossfire of two separate conflicts thousands of kilometres apart.
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The Black Sea has been a war zone in slow motion since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Grain ships, oil tankers, and commercial vessels have been struck, mined, or simply stranded, and insurance premiums for anyone willing to sail those waters have climbed accordingly. Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, tensions tied to the broader conflict in West Asia have made a different stretch of water just as unpredictable.
For India, this isn't an abstract geopolitical worry. A significant share of the world's merchant seafarers are Indian, and a great many of them work vessels that pass through exactly these choke points. Misri said Modi raised the issue directly with Putin and that both leaders exchanged views on how the fallout from these conflicts has hit maritime trade and put Indian crews at risk.
Modi has said before, and reportedly repeated to Putin, that talking things out rather than escalating is the only realistic way through either conflict. It's a line India has stuck to consistently since the Ukraine war started, one that lets New Delhi keep buying discounted Russian oil while still positioning itself as a voice for de-escalation rather than a party to anyone's fight.
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Seafarer safety wasn't the only thing on the table. The two leaders went through the usual list of bilateral cooperation, political ties, trade, defence, energy, space, and the broader question of how Indians and Russians actually move between the two countries. They also welcomed the results of the 27th session of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic and Cultural matters, which wrapped up in Moscow on August 24.
Modi also used the meeting to look ahead. He told Putin he's looking forward to hosting him in India next month for the 18th BRICS Summit, scheduled for September 12-13, with India holding the bloc's chairship this year. It's worth noting that this won't be the two leaders' first cordial public moment this year — they shared a car ride to their bilateral venue at last year's SCO summit in Tianjin, a small gesture that got more attention than most formal statements.
Modi's Bishkek schedule wasn't just about Russia. He met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and that conversation covered much of the same ground — West Asia, maritime security, and the state of India-Iran ties — against the backdrop of renewed friction between Iran and the United States. Pezeshkian is due in New Delhi himself next month for the BRICS summit, so this meeting had the feel of a preview.
The Indian prime minister also sat down with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to talk about defence, IT, space, and pharmaceuticals and met Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Japarov to discuss deepening economic and defence cooperation between the two countries. A meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping was expected on the summit's closing day.
Separately, Misri also addressed India's ongoing talks with stakeholders over the future of Chabahar Port in Iran, a project India has backed for years as an alternative trade route that bypasses Pakistan, and confirmed that 239 Indian nationals who had been serving with the Russian military have now been discharged and are being brought home — a quiet reminder that the war in Ukraine has touched Indian citizens in ways that go well beyond shipping.
It's tempting to read all of this as diplomatic housekeeping — leaders exchanging pleasantries on the sidelines of a summit that's really about something else. But the seafarer issue specifically points to something more concrete. With roughly ten SCO member states already dealing with US sanctions in one form or another, the bloc's leaders spent real time this week talking about how to diversify trade routes and keep goods moving when two of the world's busiest maritime corridors are compromised.
For India, that's not just a talking point. Indian sailors are disproportionately exposed to both conflict zones, and Indian trade depends heavily on both the Gulf and the wider Black Sea-Mediterranean corridor for energy imports and exports alike. Raising the issue with Putin — a leader whose own country is a direct party to one of the two conflicts — is as much a practical ask as a diplomatic one.
Whether anything concrete comes out of the exchange remains to be seen. Words on the sidelines of a summit rarely translate into safer shipping lanes overnight. But with Putin set to visit India again in less than two weeks for the BRICS summit, there's a near-term opportunity to see whether Monday's conversation in Bishkek turns into something more than a joint readout.
There's a broader signal here about how India is positioning itself. New Delhi has spent recent years balancing its historic ties to Moscow against deepening partnerships with the West, and conversations like this one show that balancing act in practice. Raising seafarer safety with Putin doesn't require India to take sides in the Ukraine war. It lets Modi frame the issue as a shared, practical concern — one that affects Indian citizens directly — rather than a political statement about who's right in either conflict.
That framing matters for the SCO grouping too. A bloc built partly around member states looking for alternatives to Western-dominated trade routes has an obvious interest in showing it can still move goods when established shipping lanes turn risky. The World Nomad Games, held alongside the summit, offered a softer counterpoint to the security talk — proof these gatherings are as much about cultural diplomacy as hard bargaining over pipelines and ports.
For now, the outcome of Monday's meeting is a shared understanding rather than a joint action plan. India gets to say it raised its seafarers' concerns at the highest level. Russia gets another sign that its relationship with India has survived years of Western pressure. And the ships themselves keep sailing through waters neither leader can make safer alone.
This article is authored by Adnan Khan Yumkhaibam
