The US is hellbent on derailing Bharat’s rise as a Great Power for the reasons explained here, to which end it’s imposed 50% tariffs on the country and resorted to other forms of pressure against it in pursuit of an EU-like lopsided trade deal for subordinating it as a vassal, while the EU has generally been friendlier. These roles were surprisingly reversed as regards the subject of Bharat’s participation in the recent Zapad 2025 drills after the EU criticized this while the US didn’t seem to care as intuited by its lack of criticism.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas declared that “this is a great concern for our countries. If you want closer ties with us, then why participate in exercises that are existential threats to us. So, to be very clear on this message. We are not taking this, lightly”. Bharatiya Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Randhir Jaiswal then retorted that “several other countries, including NATO members, such as the US, Turkiye and Hungary, are also participating in the exercise as observers.”
That’s true since the US sent a delegation of observations to Belarus, where the bulk of the drills were held, though it should be clarified that Bharat’s contingent only participated in the part of these exercises that were held in Nizhny Novgorod. In any case, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed hope that these US observers saw that these drills didn’t constitute a threat, shortly after which she lambasted the EU for its criticism of Bharat for its participation therein in a separate statement.
US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whittaker candidly told Fox News last week that “I think the Russian threat sometimes is a little overstated”, which while being made in the context of Russia’s (arguably accidental) drone incursion into Poland, is also relevant as regards Zapad 2025. It’s therefore clear that the US didn’t seem to care about Zapad 2025 nor Bharat’s participation therein while the EU considered the drills to be an “existential threat” and Poland even closed its border with Belarus on this pretext.
The US’ approach can be attributed to Trump’s interest in retaining dialogue with Putin, which requires his administration eschewing fearmongering rhetoric that could spook the Russian leader into ending their talks upon suspecting that his counterpart is just buying time ahead of a planned escalation. As for the EU’s, its interest rest in precisely the fearmongering that the US is trying to avoid, both due to its leadership pathologically fearing Russia and as a way of appealing more to its eastern vanguard states.
The outcome is that the US was respectful of Bharat’s participation in Zapad 2025 despite its ongoing pressure campaign against it while the EU was disrespectful despite generally being friendlier towards Bharat and engaged in high-level trade talks with it. While this dynamic might de facto amount to a good cop, bad cop tactic, it was unintentional, especially after the US imposed 50% tariffs on Bharat partially on the pretext of its continued military ties with Russia that it’s maintained for national security reasons.
As it turned out, the US ramped up its pressure campaign against Bharat shortly after Zapad 2025 ended, which saw it rescind 2019’s Chabahar sanctions waiver and Trump reaffirming his desire to return US troops to Bagram Airbase (thus necessitating even closer ties with Pakistan to facilitate this). Coupled with the EU’s 19th sanctions package against Russia targeting Bharatiya tech companies, Western pressure on Bharat is intensifying, notwithstanding the exception of the US not caring about its role in Zapad 2025.
(The article was published on Korybko.substack.com on September 25, 2025 and has been reproduced here)
