Russian-Indian Relations Are Moving Beyond Their Prior Military-Centricity

The reinvestment of Russia’s stockpiled rupees into promising Indian ventures and continually growing Indian exports to Russia via the Russo-Indo Ring around half of Eurasia, which refers to the North-South Transport Corridor and the Eastern Maritime Corridor, can compensate for the trend of reduced arms sales.

The decades-long special and privileged Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership was historically known for its military-centricity, but it’s finally moving beyond that as proven by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) latest trends in international arms transfers report. The statistics shared therein might appear shocking to some at first glance but will be calmly and cogently explained in this analysis. In brief, Russia’s prior role as India’s top arms supplier is poised to become a thing of the past.

Russia accounted for just 36% of Indian arms imports from 2019-2023 compared to 58% from 2014-2018 and 76% from 2009-2013 while France’s share over the last half-decade surged to 33%. India is still Rusia’s top arms importer at 34% of its exports but this is a 34% decrease from the past period. Overall, Russia’s arms exports the world over dropped 53% from 21% of the total to 11% of the total, which led to France narrowly beating it out as the world’s second-largest arms exporter over the last half-decade.

What’s happened isn’t that India is pivoting towards the West since its purchase of Russian oil exponentially surged over the past two years, nor that it’s complying with the US’ CAATSA sanctions threats like others seem to be doing since it still purchased the S-400s during this time despite pressure. Rather, it’s largely due to India’s changing defense needs as its rivalry with China worsened following the lethal Galwan River Valley clashes in summer 2020.

France (India’s second-largest supplier from 2019-2023) and the US (it’s third-largest) have air, naval, and unmanned equipment that India considers to be better suited for ensuring its defense nowadays. That’s not to imply that Russian equipment is irrelevant or subpar, but just that the changing nature of the Sino-Indo rivalry has prompted Delhi to experiment with using non-traditional suppliers’ equipment. At the same time, however, India won’t replace its prior dependence on Russia with France or the US.

Ties with the US recently became troubled as a result of the Justice Department’s charges against an unnamed Indian diplomat who they claim conspired to assassinate a Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist with dual American citizenship on US soil last summer. Some in India also speculate that the US cut a deal with China to turn a blind eye towards the latter’s growing influence in South Asia (namely the Maldives, Nepal, and nearby Myanmar). These concerns make the US an unreliable security partner.

No similar such issues exist with France, but it’s too new of a partner to be taken for granted as a reliable long-term one at this point in time at least. Additionally, the “politics of affection” between Russia and India will result in the first remaining an important supplier to the second for years to come, not to mention Delhi’s desire to preemptively avert Moscow’s potentially disproportionate dependence on rival Beijing. All the aforesaid factors clearly work in favor of their future military ties.  

The form in which this could take is Russia remaining India’s preferred partner for its “Make in India” indigenous arms production program while imports from France and the US might eventually outpace Russia’s over the next five-year period for the aforementioned reasons. This is a sensible expectation since the special operation over the past two years also likely crimped Russia’s arms exports as its arms industry naturally prioritized development for the front over foreign contracts.

It therefore wouldn’t be surprising if France soon overtakes Russia as India’s top arms supplier, which would predictably be spun by the West and its ideological allies in Indian media as supposed proof that Russian-Indian ties are weakening. That’s not true as was explained since Russia will always play a strategic role in ensuring India’s national security and bilateral trade has exploded due to India’s import of Russian oil, but that false narrative should incentivize more proactive diversification of their ties.  

The primary obstacles to this are financial and logistical, the first of which concerns Russia’s struggle to convert its enormous rupee stockpile that it gathered from India’s exponential increase in oil imports. This issue should soon be resolved, but it would be best for both if Russia invested a considerable sum of those funds into promising infrastructure, technology, and other Indian ventures. As for the second, the North-South Transport Corridor and Eastern Maritime Corridor can reduce costs and shipping times.

These two connectivity megaprojects combine to form a Russo-Indo Ring around half of Eurasia, which connects the European part of Russia with India via the Caspian and Iran through the first corridor and the Asian part via the South China Sea, East China Sea, Sea of Japan, and the Arctic through the second. In this way, India’s exports can more easily scale by a factor of five from a little less than $2 billion in 2022 to $10 million in the coming future like Russia reportedly requested in November 2022 per Reuters.

According to Sputnik’s calculations last month based on data from India’s statistics service, Indian exports to Russia jumped by 1.4 times over the past year to a total of $4 billion in 2023, which contributed to record bilateral trade of $65 billion (mostly driven by Russian oil exports of course). The proposed reinvestment of Russia’s stockpiled rupees into promising Indian ventures and continually growing Indian exports to Russia via the Russo-Indo Ring can compensate for reduced arms sales.

If real-sector Russian-Indian trade and investment keeps expanding by the time that France potentially surpasses Russia as India’s top arms supplier, then the political impact of the previously predicted Western spin will be much less, and that’ll prevent their people from possibly being misled. It’s therefore imperative that SIPRI’s latest report stimulates the acceleration of these two’s efforts to diversify relations from their prior military-centricity and helps them more quickly overcome existing obstacles.