Russia renews partnership with India

India and Russia have agreed to extend their strategic and military partnership by another decade to 2020 that will include the supply of materiel and maintenance contracts potentially worth some USD10 billion to Moscow.

The inter-governmment agreement on military-technical co-operation, to be signed during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Russia in December, was finalised in Moscow by Defence Ministers A K Antony and Anatoly Serdyukov at the Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Co-operation (IRIGC-MTC) on October 14-15.

During Singh's visit the two sides will also sign the related inter-governmental agreement on after-sales product support: an issue that has been a long-standing point of contention in bilateral defence ties.

"It will be a bigger programme than the current 10-year programme, which expires next year, and will see a further shift from the buyer-seller relationship to joint design, development and production," Antony declared in Moscow.

Moscow remains India's largest materiel supplier - nearly 70 per cent of equipment for all three services is of Soviet or Russian origin - and annually conducts defence business with Delhi worth around USD1 billion to USD1.5 billion.

Military officials said Russia was hoping to secure lucrative contracts through the impending 10-year defence agreement because India had earmarked USD30 billion between 2012 and 2014 to modernise its military by acquisitions and upgrades: an amount expected to rise to USD80 billion by 2022.

However, during his Moscow visit, Antony was unable to resolve the contentious negotiations over the revised cost of refurbishing INS Vikramaditya (ex- Admiral Gorshkov ), the 44,750-ton Kiev-class aircraft carrier that the Indian Navy is acquiring for the price of its refit.