Russia and India, in a Close Embrace

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The USSR had been in a firm clinch with India, the successor state picked up the threads after a few hiccups

Pinaki Bhattacharya


At the beginning, in 1947, Indian armed forces had a large arsenal of legacy weapons from the British. As PR Chari had noted in an article for Asian Survey of March, 1979, the Russian platforms that India had were Il-14 transport aircrafts (26 in number), An-12 transporter type (16) and Mi-4 helicopters (26 again).

The armaments of Western sources were so dominant in the Indian armed forces, that on a visit to Moscow in 1955 by then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, refused to entertain the thought of Russian supplies, offered quite forcefully by Nikita Khruschev, then head of government of the USSR.

Chari had noted that the Soviet leader had offered 60-100 MiG fighter aircrafts. But Nehru was not impressed.

But this was set to change as Pakistan’s membership to the SEATO and CENTO had made it a client state of the USA. While Washington supplied F-104 Starfighters to the country, the US Administration of Dwight Eisenhower refused to supply those aircrafts to New Delhi.

Still, in the 1962 border war between China and India, the otherwise deficient Indian armed forces were supported on an emergency basis by American and British weaponry. The politics of the day dictated the development. Western powers had calculated that if India were to be humiliatingly defeated in the war, it could prove to be an increase of influence of Communism in Asia.

On the other hand, the Chinese were already sensing the fraying of their alliance with then Soviet Union. A result of this accrued to Indo-Russian relations in the aftermath of the war. New Delhi sought Russian MiGs and received 19 of them. But what was crucial for the time; the Russians sought to deepen the budding relationship by establishing an indigenous production facility on which the two countries partnered.

Interestingly, these were also the days of Nehru’s search for self-sufficiency for the country. But the Russians came on board for joint ventures with the leading developing country of the world, also a leader of the Non-aligned Movement.

Importantly, this ‘partnership’ concept is now being touted by the current defence minister, AK Antony. He is being Nehruvian in terms of seeking to leverage India’s ongoing arms buying spree by which another $ 150 billion will be spent in a decade or so. As a part of the modernisation process of the armed forces, Antony has made it clear that no longer the country will be just a buyer to a seller. Instead, the country looks for a ‘partnership’ with the foreign suppliers, who will have to set up joint ventures that would require technology transfers.

In the 1960s, this was only a seminal thought. The short stint of the Janata Party government in that decade, showed some signs of moving away from the Indo-Russian proximate defence relations, but it did not stay in power long enough to cause a major course change.


Crisis in the relation

Although in the 1980s, after Gandhi returned to the prime minister’s office, a conscious attempt was made to source the defence weaponry from Western sources because the Indian decision-makers did no longer wish to remain too dependent on one supplier for all their requirements. So the Jaguar deal was struck with the British defence manufacturer, SEPECAT, in 1978. Once Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister, the defence ministry decided to source its new 155mm howitzers from the Swedish manufacturer, Bofors

Rajiv was in favour of an aggressive security policy that included the beginning of the weaponisation process of the nuclear capacity. This naturally brought up the issue about delivery vehicles. While the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) was started during Indira Gandhi’s regime, a credible, nuclear warhead carrying long range missile was still some time away.

Hence, the armed forces wanted to have an alternative delivery platform ready in the form of an aircraft, configured for the delivery of nuclear bombs. Mirage-2000 was thus chosen to be procured from Dassault, the huge French conglomerate.

These expanding relations with the West, provided a sense of cooling-off in the Indo-Russian defence relations. One of the key reasons for that, was the problem that then USSR’s defence-industrial system created, in terms of providing spares at cheap, affordable rates.

On top of that, with the withdrawal of the Soviet occupying forces from Afghanistan; the eventual fall of the Soviet communists from power, and the countries fissiparous Union attendantly unwinding itself, the former Soviet defence-industrial system got distributed to the new nations that were born.

For example, Ukraine became the hub for shipbuilding and aeronautical spares; some of the Central Asian Republics not only remained metals and minerals rich, with their extraction plants located there, but they also had to meet Russian armaments manufacturers’ special material supply centre.

A result of this multi-sourced industrialised ecology, time and financial resources moved in tandem to greater heights. Additionally, the Russians decided to break the Rupee-Rouble trade concert and demanded hard currencies for India’s imports. This remained the situation through the 1990s, till the advent of Vladimir Putin as a strongman backed by the KGB, who could hold on to power long enough to combine and consolidate the various atomised organisations into mega sized corporate structures. A good example of harnessing the inherent strengths of these corporate units is the mega-sized trading arm called Rosoboronexport (ROE) that became the one stop shop for all supply queries and transactions.


Renewal of the relations

Under Putin’s drive towards making Russia’s main manufacturing activity to be in the defence industrial sector, besides of course, pumping out more oil for earning hard currency, small wonder, his early stop after becoming the President of the Russia was New Delhi in November, 2000. The meeting with the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee was focussed on increasing trade and supporting mutual economic development.

While Moscow was picking up the remaining threads of the former Soviet State that included the ‘military-industrial complex,’ it initially had major problems. Many of the production facilities closed down on as orders dried up. Russia’s armed forces reduced the earlier voracious appetite for armaments of the so-called people’s army – the Red Army – and the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe turned away with vehemence, Putin needed India’s finances to run some of them.

Of the many agreements that were signed, two key were on the two countries agreeing to a ‘Strategic Partnership,’ and a comprehensive long-term programme for scientific and technical cooperation between the Russian side and India stretching for a period between 2001-2010.

A slew of defence agreements were also signed between the two countries specifically talking about New Delhi funding many of the technology developments. They included:

Agreement between the government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of India on the Transfer to the Indian Side of a License and Technical Documentation for the Manufacture of the Su-30 MKI Aircraft, its Onboard Equipment, and the AL-31FP Engine and on Rendering Technical Assistance in Organising their Production, dated October 3, 2000.

Agreement on the Heavy Aircraft-Carrying Cruiser Admiral Gorshkov.

Agreement of Understandings between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Defence Ministry of India Concerning the Purchases of T-90 Tanks.

With these as the foundational documents of the new Indo-Russian defence relationship, an IDSA researcher, Jyotsna Bakshi, writing in the think-tank’s flagship journal, Strategic Analyses, April-June, 2006 issue, had quoted then defence minister, Pranab Mukherjee stating in 2005, “…after 2010 the progress of Indo-Russian defence co-operation will be reviewed and the two may go in for another 10-year programme.”

In 2010 when Putin arrived, he was faced with a barrage of complaints about the delays in the programmes like the huge time-overrun in refurbishing the Admiral Gorshkov, also the hiked cost of the project.

As the two sides reviewed the cooperation between the two countries, a total number of joint ventures were up at 200.

The key elements that included the Brahmos cruise missile, enabled to be fired from sea, air and land – considered the most successful totem for Indo-Russian cooperation. It also included technology transfer for the T-90 tanks. And, the procurement for Smerch multi-barrel rocket launcher.

The most important deal, however, was the joint development of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA). Meant to be the top-end of the IAF’s fighter inventory, and meant then to be inducted into service by 2017-18, this was to be a joint technical venture with Hindustan Aeronautics and Sukhoi Design Bureau, where the Indian version would be different from Russian parent.

Future Bright

The endemic problems of the Russian defence-industrial complex still remain, the propensity to put the costs of the materiel high – a sense of being overcharged – and the problems of getting maintenance services, including spares remain. And though Indian ministry of defence – essentially the government itself – seek to explore competitive systems and lesser prices, the level of Indo-Russian cooperation remains still at a higher level. In fact, the model of joint ventures between the two countries’ defence-industries are a model on which the new concept of “partnership” as opposed to the “buyer-seller” relations, have evolved. And the Indo-Russian partnership still remains as the standard measure against which all the other relations will continue to be tested.

Russia and India, in a Close Embrace - Defence and Security of India