NEW YORK – At first glance, India and China seem to be taking almost identical positions on the Ukraine war: maintain close ties with the Kremlin, buy Russian oil and refuse to join the West’s campaign to isolate Russia.

But scratch the surface and a fundamental divergence appears: whereas India wants the war to end, China has no problem with letting the fighting continue. These positions have less to do with how China and India each feel about Russia and more to do with how they feel about each other.

For decades, Russia has been one of the few major powers that India could count on to help counterbalance China. The bilateral relationship amounted to a buffer and a hedge, ensuring that instead of being squeezed by its larger neighbor, India retained some geopolitical room to maneuver. But this system cannot work if Russia is hollowed out and dependent on China. And that is precisely the outcome the Ukraine war has produced.

After its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia faced unprecedented Western sanctions, which severed its access to Western goods and markets. After Europe, once its largest source of energy demand, largely stopped purchasing Russian oil and gas,........

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