New York: The photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin sharing a car in Delhi has snowballed into a political flashpoint in Washington. The photo that had gone viral was cited as evidence of strains in the India–US relationship under Donald Trump’s policies.
Putin arrived in New Delhi last week, where Modi personally received him at the Palam Air Force Station before the two leaders travelled together to the Prime Minister’s residence at Lok Kalyan Marg. The drive — reminiscent of their earlier informal ride during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit — was widely read as a sign of warmth between New Delhi and Moscow.
But in the United States, the same image found its way into a congressional hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia. Democratic lawmaker Sydney Kamlager-Dove held up the photo as a “poster worth a thousand words,” arguing that the Trump administration’s “self-defeating” tariff policy — particularly the so-called Liberation Day tariffs amounting to a 50% duty on Indian imports, including Russian oil — was damaging the trust between Washington and New Delhi.
Here’s what she said:
“Trump’s policy towards India can only be described as cutting our nose to spite our face…”
– US representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, while showing photo of PM Modi with President Putin.
Source: House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans/YouTube#TARIFFSBackfiring… pic.twitter.com/NfxL76meah
— Wolverine (@hyperhigh) December 11, 2025
Kamlager-Dove said the tariff move had “inflicted real and lasting damage on the strategic trust and mutual understanding” built over years, warning that such actions were inadvertently nudging India closer to Russia. She accused the administration of “cutting off our nose to spite our face,” stressing that the United States, not India, had undermined the bilateral partnership. “You don’t get a nobel peace prize by driving US to strategic partners into the arms of our adversaries,” she adds.
