New Delhi:While India’s proximate relationship with Russia, especially on the military front, is quite well-known, it should have seen a dip in recent years due to a deliberate Indian state policy to reduce the preponderance of Russian equipment in the Indian military that is being spearheaded by an indigenous-production effort a.k.a the 'Atmanirbharta' (self-reliant) project as well as to diversify the sellers’ market.
But no, it hasn’t been so. Quite the contrary, Russia has come back to edge out France, thereby reinstating its place as India’s top defence partner.
On Monday, India’s ambassador to Russia, Bala Venkatesh Varma, who completes his three-year-long tenure in Moscow soon, in an interview to a Russian state-owned news agency, said: "There has been a fundamental change in how our defence relationship has moved on in the last 3 years. Russia has moved back again as the top defence partner of India."
"India-Russia defence contracts were only about 2-3 billion dollars per year when I joined in 2018. Today the total amount is about 9-10 billion dollars," Varma added.
Ending just not at that, the ambassador indicated that there was more in the offing when major defence deals are expected to be signed at an India-Russia bilateral summit likely in December, wherein the military-technical cooperation for the next decade 2021-2031 will be announced.
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Ambassador Varma’s statement is indicative of a reversal of a trend. Statistically, there was a 53 percent fall in the buying of Russian weapons in a four-year period from 2016 to 2020 when compared to the preceding five-year period.
The other important suppliers of weapons and military systems to India are France, the US, Israel, South Korea and Uzbekistan. The value of India-France defence deals had spiked on the back of the about 9 billion dollar deal to buy 36 Rafale fighters from France.
A senior Indian military source that ETV Bharat spoke to said, "The spike in the value of defence contracts with Russia is due to several important deals in recent years. We have bought a lot of Russian ammunition, the US$ 5.43 billion S-400 Triumf air defence systems deal that was signed in October 2018, the leasing of the Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine with delivery expected in 2025, Su-30 and MIG-29 fighter aircraft deals, Kamov helicopters, frigates…all these have added up."
The swing in India-Russia defence ties is significant in the backdrop of the looming US threat to impose sanctions on India under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for buying the S-400 air defence system from Russia.
Currently, about USD 7.3 billion of defence production projects are ongoing in India in an effort to attain self-reliance. These projects include the production of the Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS), Pinaka Rocket Systems, Short Span Bridging System, the ‘Varunastra’ system for heavyweight torpedoes, the Arjun tank Mk-1A, etc.
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