Washington: The US understands that India has historic ties with Russia that it will not cut off overnight but the important issue is whether or not New Delhi was deepening military and technology relationship with Moscow and the Joe Biden administration saw no evidence of that in the outcomes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, American National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said.

The meeting between PM Modi and Putin continues to reverberate in Washington DC’s policy circles. It has been raised and addressed many times at the state department’s daily briefings and Sullivan was asked about it in an interview on MSNBC, at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, whose transcript was released by the White House, all in the month of July.

“The biggest question for me is,” Sullivan said in response to a question from the host, Financial Times’ Demitri Sevastopilo. “Do we see tangible evidence that India is deepening its military and technology relationship with Russia or not? And I did not see out of that visit tangible evidence that it was, in fact, deepening; that I didn’t see deliverables in that space.”

Sullivan went on to reiterate that while the US understands India’s historic ties with Moscow which it will not cut. But, he added, the US would like to “continue to have a deep dialogue with India about the specifics and the nature of that relationship and whether it evolves over time”.

He said that though New Delhi does not need to hear it from the US, the changing ties between Russia and China, where Russia “as the junior partner to China, is not necessarily going to be a great and reliable friend to India in a future contingency or crisis”.

PM Modi’s Moscow visit received outsized attention in Washington also as it coincided with the 75th anniversary of NATO that the US hosted. The NATO summit was dominated by concerns about Russia and its ongoing conflict with Ukraine and growing economic and military ties between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Sullivan acknowledged that the US was not indifferent to the meeting between PM Modi and President Putin. “We never want to see countries that we care about, who are partners and friends of ours, show up in Moscow and hug Putin. Of course, we don’t. I’m not going to sit here and tell people otherwise.”

At the same time, however, the American NSA asked for not too much to be made of Prime Minister Modi’s “bear hug”, as the moderator described the Indian leader’s meeting with Putin. “PM Modi has a certain way, of course, of greeting world leaders,” he said, adding: “I’ve seen it up close and personal, actually.”

Sullivan, who was in New Delhi in June for the second meeting of the India-US initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), said that in ties with India, the Biden administration sees “enormous opportunity on technology, on economics, and in the statecraft and geopolitics of the wider Indo-Pacific region” and “we want to deepen that relationship as equals, as two sovereign countries who also have relationships with other countries. And India has a historic relationship with Russia that they’re not going to cut off”.

On the indictment alleging India’s involvement in an assassination attempt on a Khalistani activist, Sullivan said talks with India continue behind closed doors.

“I don’t think that there’s a lot of value in talking about the nature of that conversation publicly. It is sensitive. It is something we are working through. The story in my view has not yet been completely written; we need to keep working through it. But we have had a constructive dialogue with India on this issue. And we have made it very clear where we stand on it and what we would like to see. And it’s been respectful, and it has been effective, in my view, mostly because it is taking place behind closed doors.”

Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, is in US custody for trying to organize the murder plot.