New Delhi continues cooperation with Moscow in all spheres, despite serious pressure from the West primarily the United States

Despite geopolitical challenges and significant pressure from the West, India still intends to deepen and expand cooperation with Russia. This was stated by Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh during talks with the head of the Russian Defense Ministry Andrei Belousov which took place in Moscow in December last year.

“Despite the existing geopolitical challenges and significant pressure on India, we have decided not only to continue close contacts with Russia, but also to deepen our interaction. We will always be close to our Russian colleagues,” Singh noted. According to him relations between Russia and India remain “higher than mountains and deeper than oceans.” At the same time, the minister emphasized that cooperation between the two countries continues successfully on multilateral platforms, including the G20, BRICS and the SCO.

In turn, we note that Rajnath Singh visited Moscow to participate in the 21st meeting of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on military and military-technical cooperation, which remains one of the cornerstones of bilateral relations between Russia and India. However, as some Indian media outlets, for example, The Print newspaper, note, Russian-Indian military ties are declining, and oil supplies are becoming the basis of relations.

By the way New Delhi is ready to conclude a new long-term contract with Moscow for preferential supplies of a significant volume of “black gold” to the country. Moreover, the Indian side wants to do this as quickly as possible. Such haste may indicate that India is counting on a quick end to the conflict in Ukraine and the lifting of European sanctions. In New Delhi, the oil deal is called “historic”. Note that until 2022, our country did not trade oil with India at all, and now it is its main supplier to the country. Today, Russia supplies the Indian side with 2 million barrels per day by sea transport and provides about 40% of all oil imports to the country. It should be noted that The Print’s assertion about the reduction of military-technical cooperation between Russia and India in the context of the general development of bilateral relations is partly true. However, cooperation between Moscow and New Delhi in the military sphere continues to raise concerns in the West, in particular in the United States. Thus recently the American publication Military Watch Magazine (MWM) reported that India’s share in Russian arms exports has increased sharply since May last year and new major deals are expected. According to MWM, citing the head of the Russian presidential administration for state policy in the defense-industrial complex Viktor Yevtukhov, in the last six months alone India has increased its import of advanced Russian weapons by 15%: fighters, tanks, radar stations, leasing of nuclear submarines, etc. Cooperation between the two countries, the publication points out, is growing stronger, despite all attempts at sanctions pressure from the West.

It must be assumed that the American publication is not so far from the truth and there is a number of confirmations of this. Thus, as an example, we can cite the fact that during his stay in Russia last December, Rajnath Singh visited the Baltic shipyard “Yantar”, where he attended the ceremony of handing over the multi-purpose missile frigate Tushill (translated from Hindi as “shield-defender”) to the Indian Navy. This event once again confirmed that the military-technical cooperation between Moscow and New Delhi is increasingly consistent with the principles of the Make in India program proclaimed by the Indian leadership. And the frigate Tushill is a clear confirmation of this, since it is the result of the work of a large number of Indian and Russian manufacturers. Moreover, the frigate is equipped with supersonic cruise missiles BrahMos jointly produced, and the frigate’s crew was trained in Russia. It should be noted that Tushill was built in accordance with contracts signed between Russia and India in 2018 for the delivery of four Project 11356 frigates (NATO reporting name: Talwar). These contracts provided for the construction of four ships, including two at Yantar. The second frigate, Tamal, is currently undergoing trials in the Baltic Sea and will be handed over to the Indian Navy this year. Two more frigates are being built at the Indian shipyard Goa Shipyard Ltd. using Russian technology. They are designed to strike ships and submarines in both the near sea and ocean zones, as well as to combat air targets.

It should be noted that six previously built frigates of the Russian Project 11356 are already guarding India’s maritime borders. Their main strike weapon is a universal shipborne complex for firing eight missiles. The frigates are also armed with a 100-mm A-190 artillery mount, anti-aircraft and torpedo systems. Anti-submarine helicopters can be based on them. In addition, as Rosoboronexport Director General Alexander Mikheev recently stated, today the department he leads and India are implementing about 10 joint projects on naval issues alone and are discussing several new ones. Despite the unprecedented pressure on India from the West, military-technical cooperation with Russia plays an important role in the modernization and re-equipment of its armed forces. Thus, quite recently, the commander of the Indian Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh, in an interview with The New Indian Express, said that Russia would complete the delivery of S-400 systems to India this year. And the India Today TV channel reported that India is close to completing a deal with Russia to acquire the advanced long-range early warning radar system Voronezh, manufactured by the Almaz-Antey Air Defense Concern, worth more than $4 billion. However, there is no confirmation of this information from the Russian side yet. It is believed that this system is capable of detecting and tracking threats such as ballistic missiles and aircraft at a distance of more than 6 thousand kilometers. This level of coverage, previously available only to a few superpowers, marks a step forward for India in the development of its defense potential, the TV channel emphasized. Under the contract planned for signing, about 60% of the system’s components will be manufactured in India.

It can be added that in recent years India has purchased military products from Russia for more than $13 billion. And this is despite the fact that the current stage of development of bilateral relations is characterized by the course proclaimed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on localization of production of military products at Indian enterprises based on the principles of Make in India and Self-reliant India. In this regard, Moscow has apparently abandoned the stereotype of perceiving military-technical cooperation with New Delhi as a relationship exclusively between a seller of high technologies and their buyer. Today, India is able to offer Russia a number of its developments and achievements in the military sphere. However, one cannot discount Western sanctions, which have become a serious test for cooperation between Russia and India as a whole.

However despite this fact, it is possible to assume with a certain degree of confidence that the official visit to India by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is currently planned in Moscow, will give another powerful impetus to the development of Russian-Indian relations. Let us recall that earlier, Indian leader Narendra Modi invited the head of the Russian state to visit the country. The dates of the visit, as Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov recently stated will be set at the beginning of this year.

Note that last year, Narendra Modi visited Russia twice. In July, he flew to Moscow, where a summit meeting of the leaders of both countries took place, and in October, the Indian Prime Minister visited Kazan and took part in the BRICS summit. And now it is the turn of the Russian leader to go to India, which will be his first visit to this country since the start of the SMO in Ukraine. In this regard, it is no coincidence that Bloomberg called Putin’s upcoming visit to India “a failure of the West’s attempts to isolate Russia”.

Sergey Saenko, international observer

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