US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti rebuked Delhi following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow on July 8-9 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that there is “no such thing as strategic autonomy” and suggesting India must join America in its clash with Russia and China.

Eric Garcetti said “strategic autonomy” cannot apply in times of conflict in a swipe against Modi.

“India wants very good relations with the US but they should not be based on efforts to restrict our foreign policy choices when the US accepts no such restriction at all on its choices,” Garcetti said in a speech. “US’s China policy is not based on India’s concerns, nor is its Russia policy based on our concerns. Let’s avoid using terms like cynicism,” he added.

The remarks will go down badly in Delhi, after Modi spent two days with Putin cutting numerous key energy and raw material supply deals. Delhi has been irked by recently criticism from Washington on the state of its democracy, and also by the lack of support in its clash with Pakistan.

Initially, India was pro-Ukraine following the start of the war with Russia just over two years ago, but relations have cooled since then. A US decision to sell $450mn of F-16s to Pakistan at the end 2022 was particularly irksome for Delhi. Relations with Russia are much better as in addition to oil and gas deals, India has struck a deal to buy Russia’s advanced S-400 missile system that will significantly improve its security on both its Chinese and Pakistani borders.

Kanwal Sibal, a former diplomat, criticised Garcetti’s comments, accusing the US of double standards.

"There’s a threatening undertone in Garcetti’s remark," Sibal wrote on X, suggesting the US and Nato policies towards Russia are rooted in cynical geopolitics and that India's past experiences with the US prevent it from taking the relationship for granted. "Our past experience cautions us against that," Sibal added.

In the last two years India has been increasingly following its own national interests, which has resulted it in holding the West at arm’s length, while moving closer to Russia and China and their “multipolar” stance.

India is an active member of the BRICS+  organisation and has abstained in votes to condemn Russia's invasion during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) votes, but has not followed the Sino-Russian aggressive line in their conflict with the US in particular.

Modi has concentrated more on developing a neutral stance that puts the focus more on economic cooperation, and has maintained cordial relations with the US as a result. India is even more active in the G20 and hosted the G20 summit last year, which was dominated by Modi and expanded to include the African Union. The G20 focuses more on economics than geopolitics and pointedly both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping chose to stay away from that event.