India has maintained close ties with Russia for decades, and the Indian military is built on imported Russian arms. This friendship has come under strain, as India finds itself closer to the West on key issues, and especially on China.

Shortly before the invasion Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin met, declaring that Sino-Russian relations had ‘no limits’. China has tacitly supported the invasion, creating further distance between it and the West. Japan, under the late prime minister Shinzo Abe, worked hard to improve relations with Russia, with Abe meeting Putin over 25 times in total. Today it has fallen behind the West in condemning the invasion and sanctioning Russia.

All this raises many questions: what does Russia’s invasion Ukraine tell us about a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan? How can democratic India balance between its old authoritarian friend Russia and its new geopolitical allies such as the US and Japan? Will the Ukraine crisis jolt Japan out of its relatively passive military stance once and for all?

Come join experts on Asian international politics as we consider these and others questions, or ask our experts your own.
 

Panellists:

Julie Yu-Wen Chen, University of Helsinki

Karl Gustafsson, Stockholm University

Catarina Kinnvall, Lund University

Co-organised by SASNET and the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University.