Russian-Indian Defense Ties Are Evolving With The Times

Their military-technical ties are changing, but this isn’t at the expense of their strategic partnership and most certainly not due to foreign influence, be it American or Chinese. It’s a natural development that aligns with multipolar trends.

The visit of Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to Russia this week highlights these decades-long strategic partners’ evolving defense ties. It was already explained in March how “Russian-Indian Relations Are Moving Beyond Their Prior Military-Centricity” as India seeks to rebalance their yawning oil-driven trade deficit through more exports to Russia. Reference was also made to SIPRI’s latest trends in international arms transfers report about how India is importing less arms from Russia than before.

Nevertheless, the analysis also assessed that Russia is poised to become India’s preferred “Make In India” partner for assisting with the indigenous production of military equipment, which a report published by RT on the date of Singh’s visit lent credence to. Titled “From Buyer to Supplier: India’s military industrial complex is on the rise”, it mentions how this has taken the form of Indian-produced Kalashnikov AK-203 rifles and BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, both of which are also exportable.

At the same time, however, Russia is still producing some items at home such as multi-role stealth guided missile frigates. It was the handing over the seventh such one that Russia built for India which served as the occasion for Rajnath’s visit. According to a high-ranking Russian Presidential Administration official, the eighth will be completed in Russia by next year, while the ninth and tenth will be built in India. He also said that the two countries have more than 200 ongoing defense projects.

There’s been a recent uptick in Indian purchases too since that same figure claimed that “India’s share in the export of Russian weapons and hardware has increased by 15% in the past six months alone.” This percentage will grow further upon the clinching of their reported deal for Russia to provide its Voronezh series long-range radar system to India, which is estimated to cost around $4 billion. It can track ballistic missiles and aircraft up to 8,000 kilometers away and will solidify India’s rising military status.

When coupled with the S-400s, the last two batteries of which Russia plans to deliver to India sometime next year to complete the latter’s earlier order, India will have a world-class air defense system capable of thwarting conventional threats from neighboring China and Pakistan. Although Delhi patched up its problems with Beijing in late October just before the BRICS Summit in Kazan, its leadership isn’t going to shirk on its national security responsibilities by neglecting to prepare for any possible contingencies.

As for the western theater of potential operations, this has always been India’s top focus, but Pakistan’s domestic dysfunction from April 2022’s post-modern coup onward (which also includes a sharp economic downturn and equally sharp terrorist uptick) has forced it to focus inward. Nevertheless, India isn’t taking any chances and will accordingly deploy its S-400s and eventual Voronezh series long-range radar system in both neighbors’ directions, which highlights Russia’s role in ensuring India’s security.

It also confirms that Russia’s existing strategic partnership with China and intent to cultivate such with Pakistan are not at the expense of its relations with India. Those two correspondingly retain and want to obtain strategic ties with Russia in spite of it arming India to the teeth against them, albeit with Moscow’s motives being to bolster Delhi’s deterrence capabilities and not encourage it to go on the offensive against either, which it would never do. This is yet another regional strategic reality.

Blending the three together – Russia ensuring India’s security, its varying relations with China and Pakistan not being at the expense of its ones with India, and them accepting Russia’s role in arming their adversary to the teeth – enables observers to better understand the complexities of modern-day International Relations. All four countries are part of what Russia calls the World Majority, which have a shared interest in accelerating multipolarity processes, yet they clearly fall within two separate groups.

China and Pakistan are India’s traditional adversaries whereas Russia is its traditional partner, and while Russia’s trade with China is larger than with India, Russia relies on India as a means of preemptively averting potentially disproportionate dependence on the People’s Republic. Accordingly, the difference between them centers on their relationship with India, and this observation draws further attention to that country’s growing role in reshaping the global order as the transition to multipolarity accelerates.

Circling back to the subject of evolving Russian-Indian defense ties, Western media’s sensationalist claims in the run-up to Singh’s trip of India pivoting away from Russian arms are exposed as nothing but delayed and decontextualized reporting about last spring’s SIPRI report. Their military-technical ties are changing, but this isn’t at the expense of their strategic partnership and most certainly not due to foreign influence, be it American or Chinese. It’s a natural development that aligns with multipolar trends.