Defense Ministers of Russia and India – Sergei Shoigu and Rajnath Singh held talks in New Delhi on December 6. As the Indian minister said on Twitter, “a number of agreements, contracts and protocols have been signed regarding small arms and military cooperation.” He also noted that “India highly appreciates Russia’s strong support.”
Russian military analyst, director of the Moscow Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, member of the Public Council under the Russian Ministry of Defense Ruslan Pukhov spoke to MK about why India is interested in developing military-technical cooperation with Russia and why such a partner as India is important for Russia. …
“The Indians themselves have colossal ambitions,” the expert believes. “They are absolutely sure that India is the second most important country in the world after the United States. They even have self-determination, which in translation sounds like this: “the largest democracy in the world and the second most important country after the United States.” India is pursuing a fairly aggressive foreign policy, and such a policy must be backed up by strong armed forces. Considering that their armed forces are large, and their own defense-industrial complex is, to put it mildly, mediocre, they need a number of technologies that, until recently, could only be provided by our country. In particular, nuclear powered submarines, sophisticated rocket technologies, thanks to which India acquired a large number of supersonic heavy missiles “BrahMos” (“Brahmaputra-Moscow”).
– But all this is necessary for India, and why are we interested in such cooperation?
– We need this because India is a growing, large country, actively participating in various kinds of international organizations, forums, conferences. We are certainly better off having India as a friend than as an enemy. And then the Indians pay good money. Although, admittedly, negotiations with them are always very difficult. India is our old arms market dating back to Soviet times. Unlike China, which only opened in 1989. We have long-standing historical ties with India, and we, of course, pretend to keep this market behind us. True, from there we are now strenuously displaced by a number of other players. In particular, the French military companies. The Americans and Israelis have become very active. So, in this market, we face tough competition, practically a struggle,
