Covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a ‘multi-aligned’ nation

President Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military action,’ which the rest of the world defines as an invasion, has triggered a global geopolitical and economic crisis, receiving unprecedent coverage in the global media. In India, an old ally of Russia, going back to the days of the Soviet Union, the coverage has a very different tone and tenor. This paper focuses on the communicative dimensions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine within the geopolitical framework of a transforming India. After examining the Western governments and media’s assessment of the invasion, evident in various commentaries and concerns expressed by think tanks and government reports, the paper will focus on how the mainstream Indian media – both state broadcasters and privately owned news channels and newspapers – have reacted to arguably the biggest crisis in Europe since the end of Nazism.

The paper suggests that, broadly speaking, the coverage in the media, though scant, has been more balanced than the almost systematic and unrelenting diatribe against Russia and its president in mainstream Western media. The paper seeks to explain this difference in geopolitical terms: India has very good relations both with its BRICS partner Russia – especially in energy and defence sectors - and with the West, which it cannot afford to antagonise if New Delhi wants a bigger role at the global stage, as the world’s biggest democracy and its fifth largest economy. The paper asks whether these tensions are also reflected in the coverage in the Indian media, as the country aims to shift from non-alignment to multi-alignment.