Russia’s ‘special operations’ impacts its ability to deliver military equipment

India was not able to receive some expected military supplies from Russia. Instead, the Indian Air Force stated that this delivery will not be taking place at all. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and its ongoing military operations, appear to have sacked Russia’s ability to meet customer demands for its military equipment.

From Fox News:

The report did not mention specifics of the delivery, India has received a range of weapons and vehicles from Russia in recent years, such an air defense system in 2018 and spare fighter jets, including the MiG-29 and Su-30MKI. Russia handed off spare units to India in some cases.

Reuters noted that the biggest “ongoing delivery” from Russia to India concerned the S-400 Triumf air defense system units, which India bought for a sum of $5.4 billion. India received three of those systems, with two more required to complete the contract.

The U.S. Treasury claimed in February that sanctions and export controls put in place as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have “degraded Russia’s ability to replace more than 9,000 pieces of military equipment lost since the start of the war.”

The sanctions also allegedly “forced production shutdowns at key defense facilities and caused shortages of essential components for tanks and aircraft production.”

“Russia is also running out of munitions and has lost as much as 50 percent of its tanks,” the department wrote in a statement posted online. “At the same time, our coalition has provided Ukraine with state-of-the-art military equipment, while Russia has been forced to turn to mothballed Soviet-era weapons.”

The shortage will have a significant impact on India’s plans to continue modernizing its forces: Officials said they had to slash projected spending for the next financial year by a third compared to the previous one.

Fox News has the article here.

Category: International Affairs, Russia