In a rather ham-handed effort to draw India into the confrontation brewing between Russia and the West over Ukraine, Washington on Thursday cited the sale of the S-400 air defence missile system by Moscow to New Delhi to bolster its thesis of an allegedly rogue Russia playing a “destabilising role in the region”.

While it is true that the USA has been expressing its concern bilaterally to India about the latter’s decision to ink the $5 billion agreement to buy the surface-to-air missile defence system in October 2018, for the State Department to raise the issue publicly and to link it with Russia’s stand-off with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) countries is nothing short of diplomatic arm-twisting which South Block would do well to resist robustly.

India is not only exercising its sovereign right to enter into defence deals which it believes are required in the emerging regional and global security scenario, and New Delhi in its official reaction to the US statement has said as much, but it is also vital to underline the independence of the country’s foreign policy obviously guided by the national interest.

In that sense, the USA by overplaying its hand may have done India a favour by providing it an opportunity to nuance its position on the unfolding crisis in Ukraine without being accused of trying to punch above its weight. The Indian foreign policy establishment seems to have twigged, because after the State Department’s statement, New Delhi issued its first official remarks on the Ukraine standoff, calling for “a peaceful resolution of the situation through sustained diplomatic efforts for long term peace and stability in the region and beyond”. While this may sound like proforma diplomatese, it is a stand which Russia would be reasonably happy with as it indicates Indian neutrality and is one the West cannot really object to.

Both aspects are of vital importance to New Delhi. Russia, it ought to be kept in mind, is still the largest arms supplier to India including for spares, and with the Chinese backing the Kremlin position on Ukraine, New Delhi must do all it can to ensure the deepening Sino-Russian alliance does not come at India’s expense or, indeed, propel Russia to abandon its neutrality on the India-China boundary dispute, Kashmir, and the regional counterterrorism initiative against radical Islamists.

Simultaneously, and despite the welcome warmth in India’s ties with the US and the EU over the past decade, India is correctly circumspect in not being drawn into the Western embrace to an extent where it proves suffocating for it strategically. The Ukrainian crisis is essentially a European problem where the Indian interest is extremely limited. The complicated history against the backdrop of which the moves and counter-moves by Russia and Nato are playing out means there is no clear good guy versus bad buy narrative when it comes to Ukraine. India’s security and economic interests dictate that its relationships with the West and Russia are kept on an even keel.