India And Russia Are Rewriting Their Defense Partnership

Eurasia Review | Nikola Mikovic

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed defense cooperation during the September 12–13 BRICS summit in New Delhi, preceding Army Chief General Dhiraj Seth’s official visit to Russia. These diplomatic exchanges signal a structural shift away from traditional buyer-seller transactions toward technology sharing and licensed domestic production.

Moscow’s reliance on traditional arms sales faces headwinds as New Delhi expands domestic manufacturing, which now accounts for approximately 65 percent of its military hardware. Concurrently, India diversifies its defense imports through partnerships with the U.S., France, and Italy while negotiating potential joint initiatives such as Rosoboronexport’s T-90MS tank co-production offer. Furthermore, the February 2025 Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics agreement permits mutual troop and asset deployments that could aid Russian naval maintenance constrained by Ukraine war losses. These dynamics afford New Delhi greater leverage to dictate the terms of its longstanding bilateral defense relationship.

Comment

Rosoboronexport's proposal to co-produce the T-90MS main battle tank highlights the structural friction facing heavy armored fleets under contemporary attrition models. The sustained attrition rates observed across Ukrainian operational sectors indicate that conventional mechanized formations require continuous technological adaptation to remain survivable against proliferated unmanned aerial systems.

Strategic Question for Discussion

How does Rosoboronexport's offer to co-produce the T-90MS main battle tank alter the modernization calculus for ground forces already grappling with the battlefield survivability lessons of the war in Ukraine?

The available evidence suggests that while joint production offers immediate industrial capacity benefits, the persistent vulnerability of heavy armor to drone-directed fires complicates large-scale capital allocation for conventional tank fleets. Consequently, procurement agencies face a difficult trade-off between sustaining legacy mechanized platforms and reallocating resources toward counter-unmanned aerial systems and advanced sensor networks.

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