By Dr. Sahibzada Muhammad Usman
The war in Ukraine, which has been raging since February 2022, has thrust India into the role of key arms exporter to Russia. For decades India has relied on weapon imports, but now they are looking to turn the tables, leveraging the investments they have made in their domestic industry to emerge as exporters of drones, precision munitions, and more.
As the war continues, Ukraine and Russia seek to rebuild and upgrade their militaries. The conflict thus far has been a major war of attrition, with both sides losing thousands of tanks, dozens of aircraft, and hundreds of helicopters. These massive losses have driven increased demand for arms suppliers, and India has not hesitated to step into that role. Logistically, the proximity to the conflict makes India an ideal supplier, along with other countries. In the case of India, flights or ships across the Caspian Sea allow export to Russia without the need to traverse unfriendly terrain or waters.
India has filled a major need for Russia by supplying Russian forces with a slow-flying, hard-to-intercept cruise missile. According to some reports, up to 2,500 missiles have been provided to Russia, and a smaller number of reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have also been sold. For Russia, which has expended thousands of its precision-guided standoff weapons, these Indian missiles have helped provide critical capability at a meaningful scale.
Arms sales are becoming a significant source of revenue for India and are likely to continue supplying weapons to all sides of the conflict. Meanwhile, India continues to supply weapons to Russia while it has maintained a careful balance in its relations with the West on other matters.
Despite sanctions and the suspension on Russia, India has managed to export weapons to different militant groups in Iraq and Syria, and it has now added Russia to the list. In exchange, rumors suggest India might obtain modern SU-35 multi-role fighters to upgrade its aging airforce. It remains to be seen if India will follow up exports of the missiles with larger loitering munitions.
The war in Ukraine has had many second and third-order effects on global security. One of these has been the thrusting of India into the role of major arms suppliers. For India, the war serves as an opportunity to increase revenue and gain valuable experience in fielding their indigenously developed weapon systems. The relations India is forging with Russia will likely lead to deeper collaboration between them in the future. For example, Russia is investing in local factories to produce Indian arms domestically.
In the year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western democracies have condemned Moscow, slapped wide-ranging sanctions on it, cut back on Russian oil and gas, and sent unprecedented amounts of arms and ammunition to help Ukraine defend itself. But the world’s biggest democracy India hasn’t done any of that.
India has solidified ties with Moscow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Vladimir Putin in September and called their countries’ friendship “unbreakable.” He did tell the Russian president it’s “not a time for war.” But a year on, Modi still refuses to assign blame for the violence and has voiced more concern over the spike in global food and fuel prices triggered by the war.
Meanwhile, as Europe eschews Russian oil and gas, India has doubled down on buying Russian oil at bargain prices, much to Washington’s chagrin. All this is a reminder that a year into this war, condemnation of Russia is far from unanimous. Much of the global south actually sees the West’s focus on Ukraine as a distraction from other, more pressing issues like food security, inflation and mounting debt.
India still buys more oil from Middle Eastern countries than Russia. But its Russian share has skyrocketed. In December, India imported 1.2 million barrels of Russian crude. That’s a whopping 33 times more than a year earlier. In January, the share of Russian crude rose to 28% of India’s oil imports up from just 0.2% before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Indian officials have defended those purchases by saying it’s their job to find bargains for their citizens.
India wants to prevent Putin from getting closer to China’s Xi Jinping. India’s biggest foreign policy preoccupation is not Ukraine or Russia. It’s China. The two countries share a more than 2,000-mile disputed border. Satellite imagery shows China may be encroaching to capture different territories. Soldiers clashed there in June 2020 and again this past December. And as the West isolates Russia, India fears Putin is already looking eastward toward Beijing.
Despite the Ukraine war, that’s true for Washington too. So even if Washington doesn’t like it, Biden administration officials say they understand why India has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and they’re willing to grant India a wide berth. They may even see India’s continued ties with Putin as useful to try to mitigate just how far the Ukraine war drives him into Xi Jinping’s arms.
About Author:
Research Scholar and Academic; Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Pisa, Italy. Dr. Usman has participated in various national and international conferences and published 30 research articles in international journals.
Email: usmangull36@gmail.com
