Expert explains why India has reduced weapon supplies from Russia
Photo: India has decreased Russian weapon supplies (Getty Images)
India used to depend heavily on arms supplies from Moscow. Now it is receiving more and more weapons from Western countries, according to Swasti Rao, Associate Fellow at the Europe and Eurasia Center, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses from India.
“If you look at the last five years, we have really tried to diversify away from Russian weapons. We are now getting more and more weapons from the US, from France, from Israel,” she said.
130 warships of the Indian Navy already have Ukrainian gas turbine engines.
According to her, most of the aircraft, especially Soviet ones, operated by India have gas turbine engines from Ukraine. Ukraine has modernized the AN-32 transport aircraft.
“The Ukraine-India technical-military cooperation has been going on very steady and this is an important point to realize. Because I mean Ukraine has come up as a reliable partner too and this is something that we really appreciate,” Rao added.
She said that four warships that India ordered from Russia in 2016 have gas turbine engines from Ukraine.
“After 2014, when Ukraine and Russia had tensions over Crimea India imported those engines from Ukraine, sent them to Russia, so that they were able to give us the ships,” she said.
India has sharply reduced its orders for military equipment from Russia and is now buying more from Western suppliers. According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, only 36% of India's arms imports came from Russia last year, down from 76% in 2009.
