Putin in a rage, India pulls out all the stops
Artillery from India is being diverted to Ukraine by European customers. This situation has been going on for over a year and New Delhi has never intervened to stop these transfers… which has the tendency of annoying the head of the Kremlin.
The Reuters news agency relays the information. Already last July, Moscow, in the person of Sergei Lavrov (Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs) had complained about the situation to Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In theory, the Indian authorities limit the use of artillery ammunition to the declared buyer, reports France 24. The customer, in the event of an unauthorized transfer, risks being banned from future sales. For his part, the spokesperson for Indian diplomacy, Randhir Jaiswal, had guaranteed last January that India had never supplied shells to Kiev (which, at this very moment, is in dire need of ammunition).
According to high-ranking sources, Indian munitions used by Ukrainian forces represent less than 1% of the total weapons imported by Kiev since the start of the conflict. To date, Reuters has not been able to determine whether these munitions were resold or offered to Ukraine by European customers, France 24 reports.
Although New Delhi appears to be closely monitoring these transactions, an Indian source, wishing to remain anonymous, confides that the Indian government has taken no measures to prevent the transfers.
It should be noted that New Delhi maintains good relations with Russia. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not wished to join Western sanctions against the Russian capital, which has been its main supplier of weapons for years.
However, India sees Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a way to increase its arms exports. On August 30, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said that arms exports had reached $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year. In 2029, the country's target is set at 6 billion.
(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: France 24 - Picture: Picture by tatarstan.ru via WikiCommons under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license)