Russian Indian Summit

Naseebullah Khan
In the 21st annual meeting between Russia and India, 28 agreements in different areas of cooperation such as Strategic, trade, defense, economy, education, health, blue economy, petrochemical, and energy were signed. Total 28 agreements comprised of Science, technology, innovation, intellectual property rights, military-technical cooperation 2011_2031, MoU on a joint-stock company for mines and geoscience, merchant shipping agreement, cultural exchange program, technical research and cooperation in outer space technology, opto_electronics factory and Rosoboronexport, cyber security, cooperation in the power sector, metallurgical technology, sports cooperation, collaboration in Blue economy, higher education, research and cooperation in medicine, molecular medicine, chemical research, and new drug discoveries, collaboration in Oil and Gas sector, and fertilizers. The current investment is 38 billion USD. Whereas on the other side, both countries have already planned to increase bilateral trade to 30 billion USD by 2025. In addition, Russia is a big supplier of Arms to India. During the last 30 years, it supplied military equipment worth 70 billion USD. Apart from this, both countries had signed an agreement of Joint production of manufacturing of 6 lac AK_203 assault Riffles in Uthar Pardadh Rs 5000 crore for the Indian troops before the said summit along with the provision of Russian S_400 surface air defense missile system of 5.3 billion USD to which was signed in 2018 and whose supply will start by this month. Sources claim that India has a plan to buy an air defense system of 550 from Russia too. Historically, America has been a staunch rival of Russia whereas it has friendly ties with India too. To encounter both China and Russia, the US has already initiated the Aukus and the Quad alliance as per its Indo_Pacific strategy. Surprisingly, India is the part of the Quad alliance upon which Russia has reservations, whereas India denies its participation in the Quad as an anti-Russian factor. America has time and again shown its reservations of the S_400 air defense system and its supply to India and Turkey and banned Russian companies as per the CAATSA act. Will the US punish India? No. Because of its interests with India and because of its hypocritic policy. At present, the US_India trade is 147 billion USD. From 2008 to 2019, the arms trade increased from zero to 15 billion USD. Whereas, Indian arms trade with Russia reduced from 70 in 2011 to 49 pc at present__the vacuum has filed by the US.