According to people familiar with the matter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not hold his annual face-to-face summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin after threatening to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.

A senior official with knowledge of the matter said relations between India and Russia remained strong, but the hype about the friendship at this point could work against Modi.

It will mark the second time that Indian and Russian leaders have not met face-to-face since the two countries upgraded their relationship to a strategic partnership in 2000. The summit, usually held in December, was cancelled once during the height of the pandemic in 2020.

A Russian official familiar with the matter confirmed there would be no summit this year. In September, India’s decision was made clear at SCO Summit in Uzbekistan when Modi told the Russian president that this was not the war era.

Publicly, the Kremlin has touted India as an important country that has not publicly joined criticism of the US and its allies-led war in Ukraine and has pushed for more significant trade at a time when sanctions are cutting off dealing with the US and Europe.

India is quietly scaling back its involvement in Russia’s war with Ukraine, fuelling soaring energy and food prices. India is trying to strike a balance between Russia, a key supplier of arms and cheap energy resources, and the US and its allies, which have imposed sanctions and price caps on Russian oil.

India has been one of the biggest swing nations since Russia invaded Ukraine. India has abstained from voting at the United Nations condemning Putin for waging war and has not joined a US-led campaign to sanction Moscow, taking the opportunity to snap up cheap Russian oil.

But it has come under pressure from other countries allied with the US and India to counter China’s growing assertiveness along its Himalayan border. The US recently approved a plan to upgrade India’s historical rival Pakistan’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets, a move New Delhi strongly opposes.

India has also angered Japan by joining the Russian-led Vostok-2022 military exercise, which revolves around a group of islands known in Russia as the Southern Kuril Islands and in Japan as the Northern Territories – a territorial dispute dating back to the end of World War II. Although India did not participate in the naval exercise, the relationship between the two countries has been tested.

In an editorial that India took over the G20 presidency earlier this month, Modi alluded to the Russia-Ukraine war.