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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to visit India in the near future, making his first trip to India since launching the brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We hope soon, very soon. We are looking forward to it. We will figure out the dates of President Putin to India,” Peskov told India’s ANI news service last week.

“Certainly, after two visits by Prime Minister Modi to Russia, now President Putin’s visit to India is in the works so we are looking forward to it,” he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Moscow in July for a bilateral India-Russia summit and traveled to Kazan, Russia, in October for the BRICS summit. Russia and India were both founding members of the BRICS economic group and the two countries have a long history of annual summit meetings, interrupted in recent years by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia invading Ukraine.

Peskov did not provide any firm details of Putin’s travel plans. The New Indian Express quoted unnamed sources who said the trip could come very soon, perhaps as early as the first week in December, although it could be “postponed if the war between Russia and Ukraine further escalates.”

The Times of India (TOI) thought it would more likely be early next year, probably framed as the 25th annual Russia-India Summit. The annual summit has not been held in India since 2021.

Whether Putin travels to India before or after New Year’s Day, the visit will be taken as “a further sign that U.S.-led efforts to isolate him on the world stage are failing,” as Bloomberg News put it.

Modi’s willingness to visit Russia twice in 2024 and physically embrace Putin as a “friend” in July – just one day after a Russian missile obliterated a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv – was already a severe blow to the Biden administration’s hopes of turning Putin into a global outlaw.

India is a vital U.S. ally, both from a global economic standpoint and as a regional counter against Chinese influence, so Washington’s objections to Modi chumming around with Putin were muted.

Modi has expressed some reservations about Russia’s conduct in the war against Ukraine and has called for peace negotiations, but he has not said anything that might jeopardize India’s warm relations with Russia.

India is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty and is, therefore, under no obligation to arrest Putin for war crimes as the court has ordered, but Putin was still uncomfortable enough about the warrant to avoid the G20 summit in India in 2023. He skipped the BRICS summit in South Africa in July 2023 because his presence would have embroiled the host country in a major diplomatic crisis.

However, he visited Mongolia in September, and that country is a party to the ICC treaty. Mongolia refused to arrest Putin despite Ukraine’s pleas, emboldening the Russian leader to view the warrant as a trivial concern. A splashy state visit to India would solidify Putin’s contemptuous view of the ICC.

The New Indian Express expected Putin’s visit to India would “lead to the signing of new agreements in banking and petroleum, as well as acceleration of projects relating to transport and defence.”