Interpreting Putin’s Defense Of Pakistan

It was entirely factual but driven by diplomatic interests as regards their rapid rapprochement.

Putin was asked in early June by an Indian journalist during his meeting with the heads of international news agencies on the sidelines of the latest St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) about Pakistan’s military dependence on China due to it supplying 80% of that country’s hardware. He responded as follows: “You said that China has Pakistan under its total control, but I do not think so. First, Pakistan is quite a big country, and Pakistan has multifaceted ties.”

Putin then added that, “Of course, matters dealing with Pakistan’s cooperation with the People’s Republic of China have a lot of importance for the country. But everyone seeks to expand relations with China.” The remainder of his response concerned Russia’s encouragement of Sino-Indo talks aimed at sustainably resolving their border disputes and future avenues of Russo-Indo military cooperation. The part about Pakistan, however, is what elicited attention among regional observers.

The first part about Pakistan not being under China’s total control, which isn’t what the Indian journalist said in his question but could nevertheless be understood as implying, is correct. Pakistan nowadays actively balances between China and the US, and if anything, it’s leaned much more in the latter’s direction since April 2022’s post-modern coup against former Prime Minister Imran Khan. It’s still militarily dependent on China, that’s a fact, but there are limits to China’s resultant influence.

For example, Pakistan is wooing US investments in its critical minerals and oil sectors, the first of which objectively exists and could be profitable while the second’s existence has been questioned. There was also talk late last year about Pakistan possibly offering the US its own port for facilitating critical mineral exports. This could serve the dual purpose, however, of clandestinely facilitating the US’ military logistics if Trump tries to make good on his vision of returning US troops to Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase.

At the same time, Pakistan is also rapidly developing its relations with Russia, which hopes to modernize its former rival’s resource infrastructure and tap into its growing market of one-quarter billion people. The Russian Ambassador to Pakistan and the Pakistani Ambassador to Russia elaborated on their promising partnership prospects here and here. Of relevance, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is expected to visit Moscow later this summer after spring’s trip was postponed by the Third Gulf War.

It’s the Russian dimension of Pakistan’s balancing act that Putin probably had in mind when describing its ties as multifaceted. The same goes for Russia’s, which balances between China and India, and now also to a lesser extent between Pakistan and India but still prioritizing the latter. Close Sino-Russo ties further contextualize why Putin politely rebuffed the innuendo that Pakistan is dependent on China. To lend credence to that observation with all that it entails could scandalize Russia’s ties with both.

All in all, Putin’s defense of Pakistan was entirely factual but driven by diplomatic interests, particularly the rapid Russian-Pakistani rapprochement that’s expected to reach its next milestone during Sharif’s upcoming visit. Despite some security representatives hinting at Russia’s latest threat perception of Pakistan like attention was recently drawn to here, the political decision was made to comprehensively expand ties with Pakistan, optimistically expecting that the aforesaid implied fears won’t materialize.