India shrugs off US pressure on Russia ties

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 13

Ignoring US pressure of sanctions on any nation maintaining military ties with Russia, India has made it clear that it would be going ahead with the S-400 missile deal with Moscow. 

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday that negotiations were in the final stages with Russia for the missile deal. “We had told the US Congress delegation (which visited India) that this is a US law and not one of the UN,” Sitharaman said.

Asked whether she meant the law did not apply to India, she said “of course, it does not”. “India also told the US that it had had long relations with Russia, which we will endure,” Sitharaman added. The S-400 is a surface-to-air missile with a capacity to provide an “umbrella style” protective cover against incoming enemy missiles and planes.

Russia has been India’s major arms supplier and a think-tank, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, had in its March 12 report mentioned that New Delhi imported from Moscow 62 per cent of its military needs between 2013 and 2017. In a related development, New Delhi is yet to agree to the signing of a rather intrusive agreement on sharing military information with the US. This even as an India-US 2+2 dialogue  may be conducted in September, after being postponed twice at the US behest. 

In June last week, the US Senate had passed the punitive Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, without the provision of waiver that had been sought by the Donald Trump administration. India, too, had used its diplomatic channels for seeking the waiver. The CAATSA requires imposing curbs on nations that have “significant” defence ties with Russia. Among the 39 entities listed by the US is Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-controlled intermediary for export and import of arms.